Mariah Stovall Jeopardy Profile: Age, Job, Family, Stats

Find out all the Jeopardy! results for Mariah Stovall, including games played, scores and competitors.

Mariah Stovall Jeopardy Contestant Profile

Mariah Stovall is a literary agent, novelist, essayist and publishing professional based in Newark, New Jersey. She appears on Jeopardy! as a contestant from Newark with the occupation “Literary Agent & Novelist.” That description captures both sides of her career: she works professionally helping authors develop and sell books while also building her own career as a published fiction writer.

Stovall is a literary agent at Trellis Literary Management, which she joined when the agency was founded in 2021. Before Trellis, she worked as an agent at Howland Literary and Writers House, giving her experience representing authors and navigating the submission, editorial and publishing process from the agent’s side.

Before becoming an agent, Stovall worked directly within publishing houses. Her earlier career included positions at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Gallery Books, allowing her to see the business from both the publishing and representation sides. That background now informs a particularly hands-on approach to agenting, with an emphasis on helping authors shape manuscripts as well as positioning them for publication.

As an agent, Stovall represents adult literary fiction, upmarket fiction, narrative nonfiction and essay collections. Her taste tends toward distinctive, voice-driven and formally inventive writing. She is especially interested in books about outsiders, subcultures, social movements and complex individuals, particularly where those subjects intersect with pop culture, art, history, STEM, linguistics, sports and philosophy.

Her nonfiction interests are similarly broad and intellectually oriented. She has expressed particular enthusiasm for cultural criticism, journalism, science writing, history, political science, sociology, technology, media studies, linguistics and the hidden stories behind everyday ideas and objects.

Stovall is also particularly committed to representing writers from underrepresented, marginalized and minoritized backgrounds, including authors who did not attend MFA programs. She has described her editing style as collaborative and hands-on, working closely with writers to strengthen their manuscripts before submission to publishers.

Her client list has included writers such as Veronica Chapa, Tom Comitta, David Martinez, Lydia Mathis, Melissa Mogollon, Elizabeth Owuor, Sarah Priscus, Jodi M. Savage, Mai Sennaar, Navid Sinaki and Nghiem Tran. Her represented projects span literary fiction, experimental fiction, historical material, cultural criticism and narrative nonfiction.

Alongside her work as an agent, Stovall is a published novelist. Her debut novel, I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both, was published by Soft Skull Press in February 2024, with a paperback edition following in 2025. The novel is a literary coming-of-age story centered on friendship, obsession, mental health, identity and the role that punk and emo music can play in shaping adolescence and adulthood.

The book follows Khaki Oliver, a Black woman reflecting on an intense and damaging friendship with her former best friend, Fiona. After years of estrangement, Khaki receives an invitation from Fiona and begins reconsidering their shared past while constructing a mixtape. The novel moves through memories of punk shows, romantic relationships, emotional dependency and the difficult process of understanding how formative relationships shape adult identity.

Music is central to Stovall’s fiction. The novel draws heavily on punk, hardcore and emo culture, particularly music from the 1980s through the 2010s. Stovall has spoken publicly about the challenge and pleasure of incorporating highly specific music references into literary fiction and about using music as a structural and emotional device rather than merely as background decoration.

I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both received significant critical attention and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. It was also included among notable debut-book selections and received praise for its treatment of codependency, friendship, music fandom and Black millennial identity.

Before publishing her novel, Stovall had already established herself as a writer of fiction, essays and literary criticism. Her work has appeared in publications including The Paris Review, Literary Hub, Joyland, Hobart, Poets & Writers and Ninth Letter. This dual experience as both an author and an agent gives her unusual insight into the publishing process from both perspectives.

Stovall studied at Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges in California, where she majored in English and World Literature and minored in Linguistics. The combination fits closely with her later interests in voice, language, narrative structure and cultural analysis.

She is originally from New Jersey and is now based specifically in Newark. Her professional biographies consistently identify her with the New York-area publishing world while maintaining strong roots in New Jersey.

Stovall has also volunteered with literary and publishing organizations. Her past service has included work with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, including roles connected to diversity-related data and surveys, and with Periplus, an organization supporting emerging writers.

Her career is therefore unusually integrated. She does not simply represent other writers while keeping her own creative work separate; rather, her life as a novelist, critic and essayist directly informs her editorial and agenting approach. She understands querying, revision, publication and literary careers both as an industry professional and as an author who has gone through those processes herself.

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Mariah Stovall Jeopardy Results