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Roche's memoir to Dialogue Books
Dialogue Books has acquired A Working-Class Family Ages Badly: A Memoir of Love and Life Between Two Pandemics by Juno Roche.
Publisher Sharmaine Lovegrove bought UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Sophie Scard at United Agents. Publication is scheduled for 2022.
The memoir will cover Roche's early life and how they have lived and loved in the decades between the AIDS epidemic and the coronavirus pandemic. Roche was born in Peckham in the 1960s into a working-class family who "dabbled in minor criminality". Roche was the only member of their family to go to university, and shortly after beginning their course at Brighton, they were diagnosed with HIV, then a "potential death sentence".
Roche spent much of their younger life caught up in serious drug addiction, often financed by sex work, but recovered and, after working for some years as a teacher, is now a writer and campaigner. Roche will offer a "nuanced and illuminating" perspective on gender, addiction, class, education and culture, says the publisher.
Lovegrove said: "I am so pleased Juno has joined Dialogue Books. Their work is important in highlighting the truths and experiences of the intersection of gender, class and health. Juno is an exceptionally talented writer whose work lights the page and fires us up to be part of the creation of a fairer, more equal society. Juno’s story has the potential to engage so many readers and it’s an honour to be on this journey."
Roche said: "I’m beyond excited to be working with Dialogue Books and Sharmaine Lovegrove on my next book, a memoir. A book in which I get to explore queerness, class and HIV, and the ways that those identities weave and have played out between two pandemics, spanning two different centuries. I have such immense respect for the work that the team at Dialogue commissions and creates, and cannot wait to start my journey with them."
Roche's first three books, Queer Sex (2018), Trans Power (2019) and Gender Explorers (2020) were published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
