Shawna McCarthy began her publishing career at Firehouse Magazine as an editorial assistant and moved up to Editor before switching genres by becoming Assistant to the Editor at Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine where she eventually became Editor and won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor. From there she moved to Bantam Spectra as Senior Editor where she acquired books from writers such as Robert Charles Wilson, Connie Willis and William Gibson.

After some time off for the birth of her first child, she went back to work at Workman Publishing as Senior Editor. While at Workman she acquired that company’s only novel—Good Omens, by (co-Goh) Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. 

Four years later, after another child, she began a new career as a literary agent with Scoville Chichak Galen while at the same time founding Realms of Fantasy Magazine with Sovereign Media of Virginia. Realms, now in its 16th year of publication and currently published by Tir na Nog Publications, is the world’s most successful magazine devoted solely to fantasy. As an independent agent for more than ten years, she represents Robert Charles Wilson, Daniel Abraham, Liz Williams and many other well-known fantasy and science fiction writers. She resides in coastal New Jersey.