2015 novella ‘Panthers and the Museum of Fire’ sold to US

Martin Shaw, agent at Alex Adsett Publishing Services, has sold US and Canadian rights to Sydney author Jen Craig’s novella Panthers and the Museum of Fire (Spineless Wonders) to LA-based Zerogram Press, an imprint of Green Integer.

Originally published in 2015 and longlisted for the Stella Prize the following year, Panthers and the Museum of Fire follows the narrator as she walks from Glebe to a central Sydney cafe to return a manuscript by a recently-dead writer.

‘Zerogram Press is particularly honoured to add Jen Craig to our list, and to bring her marvellous writing to North American readers,’ said publisher Jim Gauer. ‘She appears to write effortlessly, as though all of her novella has been breathed out at once, without a sentence or a phrase or a word out of place. And yet her work is alive with a fierce sense of urgency, without a word or a phrase that is ever predictable, and with a continuous sense of those inevitable surprises that are the hallmark of all living art.’

Shaw said: ‘I only came to this book very late, but thereafter it became a particular passion project of mine to take it to overseas territories—it so thoroughly deserves to be on the world stage!’

US publication is planned for late 2020.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions