Viking swoops in six-way battle for Hauser's Crane Wife

Viking has triumphed in a six-way auction for The Crane Wife by C J Hauser, an essay collection including her account of going on a scientific expedition to study the whooping crane 10 days after calling off her engagement.

Hauser's original essay “The Crane Wife” created a viral sensation when first published in the Paris Review online last year, receiving over one million views. The book will include the title piece and “many more personal, illuminating essays that wrestle with received narratives of romantic love, and draw on the worlds of literature, science and the supernatural, to open up new possibilities for what a love story can be”.

Isabel Wall, commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Meredith Kaffel Simonoff at DeFiore & Company. It will publish in hardback, e-book and audio in spring 2022. US rights sold to Lee Boudreaux at Doubleday, also in a six-way auction. 

Wall said: “Like countless others, I was blown away by CJ’s essay 'The Crane Wife' when it appeared online last year. This collection more than lives up to that staggering piece. I’m in awe of CJ’s boundless curiosity and her ability to use cultural touchstones to elucidate so many essential truths about modern relationships. I’m immensely proud to be publishing her at Viking.”

Hauser teaches creative writing at Colgate University and lives in upstate NewYork. She has published two critically acclaimed novels in the US, Family of Origin (PRH USA) and The From-Aways (William Morrow). Her work has been published in the Guardian, Tin House, Esquire and the Kenyon Review. The Crane Wife will be her first full-length work of non-fiction.

She said: “I'm absolutely thrilled to have found my UK home with Viking. To be published as part of their list of writers I've long read and admired is an honour."