Who

Friedrich is chief of the tiny but influential literary agency the Friedrich Agency, which she started in 2006.

Backstory

The daughter of author Otto Friedrich, who wrote Going Crazy: A Personal Inquiry (1976) and The End of the World: A History (1982), Molly started out working in book publicity. In 1978 she switched sides, joining the Aaron Priest Literary Agency, where she represented clients like Frank McCourt. In 2006, she went out on her own, taking most of her clients with her.

Of note

Friedrich was the agent on both of McCourt's big books, Angela Ashes and 'Tis. (She earned him a $1 million advance for the latter.) She also landed Terry McMillan $2.6 million for the paperback rights to Waiting to Exhale. Other authors she's worked with over the years include Sue Grafton, Jane Smiley, and Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, who dumped Friedrich for Suzanne Gluck at William Morris once their mega-bestselling The Nanny Diaries took off. Given the scandal that followed, Friedrich was perhaps well rid of them: Random House cancelled a $3 million deal for the authors' second novel after deeming it unpublishable. Friedrich can in fact be credited with/blamed for kicking off the overheated chick lit market: Way back in 1998, she repped proto-chick lit book The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank. Famously, Friedrich allowed only women editors to bid on it, a gimmick that paid off: first-time author Bank scored a $275K advance.

Personal

Friedrich is married to attorney Mark Carson-Selman. She has four children, two biological—Julia and Lucy—and two adoptive—P-Quy (Vietnamese-born) and Fernando (Guatemalan-born). The family lives in Bedford Hills, New York.

In print

Friedrich penned a 2005 book aimed at adopted children called You're Not My Real Mother! The book's title is an ode to her daughter P-Quy, who supposedly shouted that sentence at her. Friedrich says it was the only deal she's ever worked on where she didn't try to negotiate up.