Text acquires Wakefield’s ‘Youth’

Text has acquired world rights to a new YA novel by Friday Brown and Ballad for a Mad Girl author Vikki Wakefield.

Youth is a story about breaking the cycle of ‘generational poverty, neglect and abuse’. The book centres on 16-year-old Nate McKee, a ‘third-generation welfare legacy in a system without a safety net’, who doesn’t fit in and tries to stay invisible. When he finds himself in league with an anonymous stranger with a spray can, he starts down a path that will force him to choose between ‘belonging and resistance’.

Wakefield told Books+Publishing that Youth ‘feels like the book I’ve been trying to write for years’. ‘I think it’s shaping up to be an honest, often funny, sometimes devastating story about how difficult it can be for a young person whose foundation is built on generational poverty, neglect and abuse to break the cycle. In many ways, it’s a companion novel to All I Ever Wantedーthe flip-side of Mim’s experience.’

The novel was acquired as part of a two-book deal.

Youth will be released in the second half of 2018.

Category: Junior Local news Rights and acquisitions