Stellar authors for new Shakespeare project

Novelists Anne Tyler and Jeanette Winterson will reimagine Shakespeare plays for the modern age as part of a new project from Random House's transatlantic fiction imprint, Hogarth.

The Hogarth Shakespeare programme will launch in 2016, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, and see a series of novelists putting their own spin on the Elizabethan dramatist's world-famous plays. More authors will be announced closer to the launch.

Anne Tyler has selected The Taming of the Shrew to interpret, with Becky Hardie, deputy publishing director at Hogarth, signing world rights from Jesseca Salky at Hannigan Salky Getzler. Winterson will tackle The Winter's Tale, in a world rights deal done with Caroline Michel at Peters, Fraser & Dunlop.

Winterson said: "All of us have talismanic texts that we have carried around and that carry us around. I have worked with The Winter’s Tale in many disguises for many years. This is a brilliant opportunity to work with it in its own right. And I love cover versions."

The Hogarth Shakespeare was devised by Juliet Brooke, senior editor at Chatto & Windus and Hogarth, alongside Hardie. They make up the UK publishing team of Hogarth along with publishing director Clara Farmer.

Farmer said: "The opportunity to ask our best living writers to reinterpret Shakespeare’s many worlds has proved irresistible. The time is ripe for a dedicated series of stand-alone retellings that will form a covetable library and a celebration of Shakespeare for years to come."

Hogarth was launched in 2012 as an imprint for new literary fiction, taking the form of a partnership between Chatto & Windus in the UK and Crown in the USA. It is inspired by Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press, originally founded in 1917.

It has had success with books such as Shani Boianjiu's debut The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.