As we watch April and its oblivious blossoms approach from our windows, there’s perhaps no better metaphor for the past couple of months at the agency than the stubborn arrival of Spring. A lot has happened since the beginning of 2020 and much like that Neruda staple - “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming” – great literature persists.
Molly and Lucy started the year off with Jackie Polzin’s BROOD. Sold to Doubleday (Random House) at the first US auction of 2020, Polzin’s debut novel was then quickly snapped up at UK auction by Picador and, more recently, sold at auction in Germany to DTV with Italian rights acquired shortly after by Stile Libero with a pre-emptive offer.
For readers of Jenny Offill and Rachel Cusk, BROOD follows an unnamed narrator’s stubborn attempt to keep her small brood of four chickens alive and safe over the course of one savage winter in Minnesota. Woefully unprepared for the task, she battles the relentless predators, severe weather and unforeseen bad luck—all the while grieving a recent miscarriage, and coming to terms with her infertility and the accompanying uncertainty that her future holds.
Not long after, Heather and Molly closed another debut novel auction, this time with Dutton (Penguin). BEE MUSIC by Eileen Garvin tells the tale of three lonely residents of a rural Oregon town, each struggling to deal with one of life's curveballs—a teenager who has just become paraplegic after a freak accident, a middle-aged widow suffering from panic attacks, and a young man with severe social anxiety—who come together on a local honeybee farm where they find surprising friendship, healing, and maybe even a second chance, just when they least expect it.
BEE MUSIC instantly charmed the international market; Harper Collins will publish Eileen`s debut in Holland, Headline in the UK, LeYas in Brazil, and after almost a month-long auction German rights were acquired by Piper.
Hannah soon followed with her first domestic deal at The Friedrich Agency. Sold at auction to Penguin Workshop, RESPECTING THE MIC is an anthology of poetry from alumni and current students of the longest running spoken word club of its kind, edited by New York Times bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib, Franny Choi, Peter Kahn and Dan "Sully" Sullivan. The anthology features new work from NBA basketball star Iman Shumpert, HBO's Insecure's Langston Kerman, Youth Poet Laureate Kara Jackson among others. RESPECTING THE MIC also tells the story of how a single club, born out of a Chicago classroom over two decades ago, has changed the trajectory of thousands of children`s lives. As New York Times poetry editor Naomi Shihab Nye wrote of the anthology: "If anyone needs to be convinced that poetry matters - makes us bigger and wider and calmer and more confident - look here."
Bringing new voices to readers is a gift and as we continue to work away from one another, having left our four person hive in Flatiron for our scattered coops (sorry, couldn’t resist), we are grateful to have new and established authors to champion. Whatever tempests come our way it is the buoying reassurance of books that keep us afloat.
— Hannah Brattesani