Jaclyn Gilbert is the founder of Driftless Literary. She began her career in sales and marketing at Workman Publishing before joining Janklow & Nesbit’s foreign rights team—where she helped secure translation rights to works by Jhumpa Lahiri, Tom Wolfe, Laura Hillenbrand, Sarah Manguso, Maggie Nelson, and many others. Jaclyn holds a B.A. from Yale and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. In 2018, her debut novel, Late Air, was published by Little A, and her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in Post Road Magazine, Tin House, Long Reads, The Paper Brigade, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Formerly she worked as a literary agent at Cullen Stanley International, where she worked on selling works for translation by Kiese Laymon, Gina Apostol, Ariana Reines, and Kate Zambreno.
Adrian Shirk is an agent at Driftless Literary. She brings over ten years of experience as an author, editor and career mentor to dozens of emerging writers. She has two books of creative nonfiction, And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: Stories from the Byways of American Women and Religion and Heaven is a Place on Earth: Searching for an American Utopia, both from Counterpoint Press. Her essays have otherwise appeared in The Atlantic, Lit Hub, and others, as well as Catapult, where she was previously a columnist and regular contributor. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wyoming, and worked as an editor at Wilder Quarterly, as well as the erstwhile small press The Corresponding Society and its biannual journal Correspondence. Most recently, in addition to working with clients and developing manuscripts for Drift(less), she teaches in the BFA Creative Writing Program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, serving as the Writing Lives Advisor and Internship Coordinator. She lives in the Catskills, where she helps run a cooperative artists’ residency called The Mutual Aid Society.
As an agent at Driftless Literary, Christine Kalafus calls on her decade of leading writing workshops, private editing services, as contributing editor for literature magazines, and in her cross-discipline education and practice of curating intelligent aesthetics. Previously a seamstress for the interior design industry, her work appeared in Vogue and is on permanent display at The Mount, home of 19th and 20th century writer and designer Edith Wharton. Christine holds a BA in interior design from the University of New Haven and an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. Essays, flash non-fiction, and poems have been published by The Culture We Deserve, Longreads, The New Guard, and The Connecticut Literary Anthology among others. “Horses,” selected by Mark Doty as the winner of the Knightville Poetry Award, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. “I’ve Heard You Make Cakes” aired on WNYC for The Moth Radio Hour. Her memoir Flood will be published by Woodhall Press spring 2025.
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At Driftless Literary, Jaclyn, Adrian, and Christine work closely with a select list of authors to most deeply engage in the developmental editorial and revision process before submitting finished manuscripts to top literary and independent presses locally and internationally. Together, they are committed to helping authors develop experimental, genre-bending work destined to enrich the diverse ecology of our literary landscape.
