Meg Keene Books, a project from Wicked Son, publishes exceptional Jewish and Israeli fiction across genres. We're looking for literary fiction, romance, thrillers, horror, family sagas, crime, fantasy, and literary memoir, along with books that defy any one category.
We publish books where Jewish or Israeli life, culture, and ideas are vital to the story. We care about great prose, depth, and complexity—but we also love books you'd read at the beach. We're looking for books span Jewish experience, from the vast diaspora to Israel, through memory and loss, exile and aliyah, tragedy and joy.
We publish books for everyone, but our work is dedicated to the smart, demanding, and eternal Jewish reader.
What We Publish
Four to six books a year means no divided attention: every novel gets serious editing, thoughtful design, and the full weight of our marketing and promotion. We treat each of our books like a Jewish cultural event.
The Idea
An intentionally small list...
... of books with something to say
We're looking for books that are strange, smart, funny, sexy, and difficult (and yes, commercial). We let our novels be deeply Jewish without translating themselves for outsiders. We want stories that confront the present moment and explore our history. We're looking to publish exceptional books, and launch important careers.
Meg Keene is the Executive Editor of Meg Keene Books, part of Wicked Son, with global distribution through Simon & Schuster. She has spent her career at the intersection of writing, editing, community, and culture.
Meet the
Executive Editor
For fifteen years, Meg was the founder and editor-in-chief of A Practical Wedding, which she built from a kitchen-table blog into a self-funded seven-figure media company and the largest independently owned wedding publication in the English language. At its height, APW reached more than two million readers a month and had a cross-platform reach of more than 15 million. She is also the bestselling author of A Practical Wedding and A Practical Wedding Planner, both published by Hachette, which together have sold more than 150,000 copies.
Her writing and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NPR, and The Atlantic. She is driven by finding work with a point of view, sharpening it, and building an audience around it.
Favorite Books
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
Great House, Nicole Krauss
The Death of Us, Abigail Dean
Fervor, Toby Lloyd
Love and Other Enchantments, Masha Zur-Glozman
How To Submit
Agented + Unagented submissions welcome
Meg Keene Books is a fiction imprint of Wicked Son, dedicated to publishing ambitious, compelling Jewish and Israeli fiction for a broad American readership.
We publish books across genres and styles, from literary and upmarket fiction to historical fiction, speculative work, romance, horror, and other forms of commercial storytelling. What connects our list is not a single politics or aesthetic, but a commitment to publishing Jewish stories with depth, complexity, and confidence.
What is Meg Keene Books?
Frequently asked questions
No. Authors do not need to identify as Zionists, hold any particular political position, or pass an ideological test in order to publish with Meg Keene Books.
We are interested in excellent fiction by Jewish and Israeli writers and fiction meaningfully engaged with Jewish life, history, culture, religion, peoplehood, and experience. Our authors will not all agree with one another, or with us, on Israel, Zionism, American politics, Jewish communal life, or much else.
We believe that disagreement is part of Jewish intellectual and literary tradition, not a reason to exclude a writer from it.
Do authors have to be Zionists to publish with Meg Keene Books?
No. We are a fiction imprint.
We are not looking for novels that function primarily as ideological arguments. We are looking for books with complicated characters, moral and emotional depth, and enough room for readers to think for themselves.
Is Meg Keene Books a political imprint?
Absolutely not. Jewish and Israeli fiction encompasses an enormous world of experience. We are interested in stories about Jewish life across time, geography, culture, class, denomination, ethnicity, and diaspora.
Do books have to be about Israel?
We are particularly drawn to fiction with strong storytelling, controlled prose, intellectual ambition, emotional complexity, and a distinctive sense of voice. We are interested in upmarket commercial fiction, literary fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction, horror, romance, family sagas, and work that sits somewhere interesting between categories.
We especially love books that feel unmistakably rooted in a particular Jewish world while remaining compelling to readers who do not share that background.
What kinds of fiction are you looking for?
Very much so. We are comfortable with contradiction, disagreement, moral ambiguity, unreliable narrators, difficult characters, and books that refuse to tell the reader exactly what to think.
A novel does not need to reflect the editor’s worldview. In fact, a literary culture in which every book agrees with its publisher would be an exceptionally dull one.
Are you interested in politically complicated books?
Yes. Criticism of Israeli governments, Israeli policy, Zionism, Jewish institutions, or Jewish communal politics is not disqualifying.
Our standard is literary, not ideological.
Will you publish writers who are critical of Israel?
Of course.
Will you publish Arab-Israelis authors?
Yes. Meg Keene Books considers both agented and unagented submissions.
Are submissions open to unagented writers?
There is no formula. We're looking for books that are in some profound way Jewish or Israeli. We're looking for books that grab you in a chokehold and don't let you go, for authors with something to say. We want messy urgent books with a reason to exist, books that span the breadth of Jewish experience.
We are voracious readers across genres and are looking to publish books that initially don't seem like they belong on the same list, but truly do when you dig beneath the surface. We'll publish LitFic, next to horror, next to erotic fiction, next to a Holocaust Novel, next to a hardboiled crime novel, next to bookclub.
Above all, we want excellent novels: books with voice, urgency, sharp prose, and a thrumming heart.