The co-founder of Broadside PR and a literary agent at Massie McQuilkin & Altman, Michael Taeckens has 31 years’ experience working in the publishing industry. His clients have been awarded and shortlisted for major international literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Booker Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, PEN America Literary Award, Whiting Award, International Dublin Award, Windham-Campbell Prize, Women’s Prize, Story Prize, L.A. Times Book Prize, Young Lions Award, Lambda Literary Award, NAACP Image Award, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and more (see “Clients” for details), and have been featured regularly in national media, including ten of his projects on the cover of the New York Times Book Review (Namwali Serpell‘s On Morrison, Daniyal Mueenuddin‘s This Is Where the Serpent Lives, Abraham Verghese‘s The Covenant of Water, Sarah M. Broom‘s The Yellow House, Namwali Serpell‘s The Old Drift, Luis Alberto Urrea‘s The House of Broken Angels, Tom Perrotta‘s Mrs. Fletcher, Lidia Yuknavitch‘s The Book of Joan, Jordy Rosenberg‘s Confessions of the Fox, and Belle Boggs‘sThe Art of Waiting).

New York Times bestsellers he’s worked on include Douglas Stuart‘s John of John (longlisted for the Booker Prize), Abraham Verghese‘s The Covenant of Water (over two million copies sold), Nicholas Boggs‘s Baldwin: A Love Story, Jeff VanderMeer‘s Absolution, Rachel Khong‘s Real Americans, Clint Smith‘s #1 bestseller How the Word Is Passed (included in Obama’s favorite books of 2021 list), Luis Alberto Urrea‘s Good Night, Irene, Anthony Veasna So‘s Afterparties, Natasha Trethewey‘s Memorial Drive (included in Obama’s favorite books of 2020 list), Sarah M. Broom‘s The Yellow House (included in Obama’s favorite books of 2019 list), Gabriela Garcia‘s Of Women and Salt, Janice P. Nimura‘s The Doctors Blackwell (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Leslie Jamison’s The Recovering and The Empathy Exams, Tom Perrotta‘s Mrs. Fletcher, Mary-Louise Parker‘s Dear Mr. You, Adam Grant‘s #1 bestseller Originals, Tim Johnston‘s Descent, and Vikram Chandra‘s Geek Sublime (see below for more New York Times bestsellers).

In addition to Pulitzer Prize winner and Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey and Sarah M. Broom—whose The Yellow House won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award—his current and recent clients include: National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee; Nathan Thrall, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for A Day in the Life of Abed Salama; Abraham Verghese, author of the instant New York Times and National Indie bestseller The Covenant of Water, an Oprah Book Club selection and one of Obama’s “Favorite Books of 2023”; Booker Prize winner and National Book Award finalist Douglas Stuart; Namwali Serpell (three books, from 2019-2026), winner of the Windham-Campbell Prize, Caine Prize for African Writing, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and Arthur C. Clarke Award, whose The Furrows was on Obama’s favorite books of 2022 list; Poet Laureate, MacArthur Fellow, and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Ada Limón (five books, from 2018-2025); Daniyal Muneenuddin, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award and winner of the Story Prize; Pulitzer Prize winner Ed Yong; Claire Messud, whose This Strange Eventful History was longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize; Jeff VanderMeer, Nebula Award-winning author of the million-copy-bestselling The Southern Reach Series; Safiya Sinclair, whose How to Say Babylon won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography and was one of Obama’s “Favorite Books of 2023”; Jonathan Escoffery, finalist for the 2023 Booker Prize, PEN/Faulkner Award, Dublin Literary Award, and NBCC John Leonard Award; Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar, whose Homeland Elegies won a 2021 American Book Award and landed on Obama’s favorite books of 2020 list; NBCC finalist and The Atlantic and TIME contributing writer Nicole Chung; Pulitzer Prize finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and American Academy of Arts & Letters Award winner Luis Alberto Urrea; Lambda Literary Award winner and Aspen Words Literary Prize finalist Nicole Dennis-Benn; New York Times and National Indie bestseller and PEN Award finalist Leslie Jamison; MacArthur Fellow and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Maggie Nelson; New Yorker poetry editor and National Museum of African American History and Culture director Kevin Young; Janice P. Nimura, a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Biography and New York Times bestseller; Tom Perrotta, author of multiple New York Times bestsellers and writer/show runner for the TV adaptations of his novels Mrs. Fletcher and The Leftovers; The Story Prize winner and twice-nominated National Book Award author Elizabeth McCracken; National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Mark Doty; and The Whiting Foundation, which distributes the $50,000 Whiting Awards to ten emerging literary writers and the $40,000 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants to ten writers annually.

Michael has spoken about marketing and publicity widely, including at Book Expo America, Poets & Writers Live, Creative Capital, Story Summit, Grub Street, and at various literary festivals and universities. He was interviewed for the Esquire article “What’s the Future of Books?” and the Poets & Writers article “The Art of Publicity: How Indie Publicists Work with Writers.”

Michael received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 2015 he co-founded Broadside PR with his esteemed colleagues, Kimberly Burns and Whitney Peeling, and in 2025 he joined Massie & McQuilkin as a literary agent.