Elyse Cheney
Founder and Agent

Born in Brooklyn, Elyse Cheney attended the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in English with an additional focus on art history. She began her career at an art gallery in Manhattan, later landing a position at a boutique literary agency on the Upper East Side. In 1996 she moved to Sanford J. Greenburger as an agent. While there, she represented groundbreaking titles like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers and The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah. In early 2006, she opened The Cheney Agency. Some of her notable titles include The World as It Is and After the Fall by Ben Rhodes, She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, A Very Stable Genius and I Alone Can Fix It by Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker, Doing Justice by Preet Bharara, Zero Fail by Carol Leonnig, National Book Award winner The Future Is History by Masha Gessen, New York Times bestseller Zealot by Reza Aslan, Pulitzer Prize winning biography Malcolm X by Manning Marable, critically acclaimed novels The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman and Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont, #1 New York Times bestseller No Easy Day by Mark Owen, New York Times bestseller This Town by Mark Leibovich, The Daughters of Kobani by Gayle Lemmon, Moonwalking with Einstein by Josh Foer, Endurance by astronaut Scott Kelly, and When in French by Lauren Collins. In 2013, she was named one of the most powerful women in New York by the New York Daily News. She was also pictured on the cover of Poets and Writer’s Magazine as a game changer in publishing.