W&N to publish Moore's Hollywood memoir

Weidenfeld & Nicolson has acquired Miss Aluminium, a memoir by Susanna Moore describing her experiences in Hollywood in the 1970s and her own "hard-won arrival at selfhood".

Lettice Franklin, editorial director at W&N, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) in a one-book deal struck by Devon Mazzone at Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Moore, 74, is a writer and the author behind the 1995 erotic thriller In the Cut, which W&N republished in October last year. 

Franklin said: "It was a great thrill and an honour to introduce the extraordinary In the Cut to a new generation of readers last year. On finishing that novel, any sensible reader will be desperate to find out what Susanna is writing now. The answer is the wonderful Miss Aluminium, a memoir told in Susanna’s faultless prose. Susanna’s stories are incredible, and she tells them like no one else could—from Hawai’i to Hollywood. She has an unparalleled eye for detail and for the delights and darknesses of the human heart too."

The synopsis for Moore's memoir describes how, at 17, Moore left her home in Hawaii, "with no money, no belongings and no prospects", beginning a journey that would take her from New York to Los Angeles. She became a model and met Joan Didion and Audrey Hepburn, worked as a script reader for Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, and was given a screen test by Mike Nichols.

Moore, who is today based in NYC, went on to write novels also including The Life of Objects, The Big Girls, One Last Look, Sleeping Beauties, The Whiteness of Bones and My Old Sweetheart, in addition to In the Cut, as well as a previous book of non-fiction I Myself Have Seen It: The Myth of Hawai’i. 

W&N will publish Miss Aluminium as a paperback, e-book and audio on 11th June 2020.