Boiler House Press signs two 'exceptional' debuts from Marraccini and Bonnici

Boiler House Press has signed two "exceptional" debut works including We the Parasites by A V Marraccini and A True & Just Record by Kate Bolton Bonnici. 

Nathan Hamilton, publisher and director at UEA Publishing Project, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, for We the Parasites from Jessica Craig at Craig Literary. Hamilton also acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, for A True & Just Record directly from Bonnici. The books will be published as part of Boiler House Press’ Beyond Criticism series in autumn 2023. 

Marraccini’s We the Parasites is a "lyrical" essay about the "nature of criticism as queer desire" and was published in North America in February 2023. Marraccini commented: "It is my life’s work to bring out the vulnerability, grossness, elegance, strength, and relevance of the humanities using the critical essay as form. To be able to publish such a book more widely furthers this dream in a darkening world." 

Simon Palfrey, the Beyond Criticism editor, said: "We the Parasites is an exercise in truth-seeking that makes the very idea of dispassionate criticism feel like existential failure. Marraccini brings everything she touches alive."

Craig added: "At a time of widespread cutbacks and closures in the humanities and in literary criticism pages, We the Parasites passionately reminds us why a liberal arts education matters and of how a critic can inspire new generations to feed on art and literature."

Of A True & Just Record, Johnson commented: "This book talks with the dead—and by with, I mean alongside, or as in harmony. Bonnici’s imaginative engagement with archival texts expands, subverts, and reimagines enduring questions about gender, selfhood, and authority. Bonnici’s deeply humane book is full of quickening rediscoveries and generative reconnections."  

Hamilton commented: "We are so pleased to be taking this list forward with these two exceptional titles as we continue its mission to go boldly where ‘literary criticism’ has not gone boldly before; though our arts, politics, society and culture generally are being impoverished, at least these, and our, minds - though suffering - are not; are able to share and console and strengthen against the tide through such wonderful work."