Blink Publishing pre-empts Anna Marie Tendler’s ‘beautiful’ memoir on mental health

Blink Publishing has snapped up Anna Marie Tendler’s “powerful” memoir, Men Have Called Her Crazy, a “reckoning with mental health and the insidious ways men impact the lives of women”. 

UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, were pre-empted by editor-at-large Carole Tonkinson from Michael Nardullo, vice-president of subsidiary rights, and Sean Manning, vice-president and executive editor at Simon & Schuster. Tendler’s memoir will be published on 13th August 2024 simultaneously with Simon & Schuster in the US. 

Tendler is represented by Meg Thompson of Thompson Literary Agency, who said: “When Carole Tonkinson pre-empted Men Have Called Her Crazy, I could not have been happier for my friend and client, Anna. Carole simply feels this book deeply – as a woman, as a psychologist, as a publisher. Anna could not be in better hands.”

Men Have Called Her Crazy recounts Tendler’s time in a psychiatric hospital in 2021 as well as the events leading up to her stay and after. Blink calls the memoir a “literary self-portrait [that] examines the unreasonable expectations and pressures women face in the 21st century”. 

Tendler admitted herself to psychiatric hospital after a year of “crippling anxiety, depression and self-harm”. Over two weeks, she had multiple psychological tests, therapy and “experienced profound breakthroughs”. She said: “I am beyond excited to be publishing Men Have Called Her Crazy in the UK with Bonnier. My hope is that people will read this book and see themselves in it – the pain, the anger, the occasional humour, and ultimately the ability to heal.”

Commenting on her first acquisition for Bonnier Books since joining last year, Tonkinson said: “Men Have Called Her Crazy is the memoir that speaks to every woman who has been made to question her own sanity, doubt herself and her worth: surely, this must be all of us. Anna Marie Tendler’s powerful writing and insight and clarity enabled her to find her way out of the narratives that had been foisted on her since girlhood and create her own, new story. This beautiful and heartfelt book invites us to do the same.”