Brazen goes for Katie Yee’s ‘biting’ tragi-comedy in six-figure pre-empt

Brazen has snapped up Maggie, or A Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar, a “biting” tragi-comedy from Katie Yee.

Publisher Romilly Morgan acquired UK rights in a six-figure pre-empt from Emma Finn of C&W. North American rights were sold by Duvall Osteen at UTA to Judy Clain at Summit, and there was a German pre-empt to Ricarda Saul at Ullstein by Katie McGowan at Curtis Brown UK. The book will be published in hardback in the summer of 2025.

“Maggie, or A Man and a Woman walk into a Bar is the profound and brilliantly clever debut from Katie Yee, in which an Asian-American woman is diagnosed with breast cancer at the same time she finds out that her husband is having an affair with a white woman,” the synopsis says. “Spinning tragedy into comedy, the narrator names the tumour after her husband’s lover and starts talking to it.”

Morgan said of the acquisition: “A writer of Katie Yee’s standard is a rare – truly rare – thing to find. She writes with the bite and pace of Nora Ephron.”

Yee commented: “I’m over the moon to be joining the Brazen family! I knew from the first moment we spoke that Romilly would be the perfect editor to shepherd my book into the UK; she is as passionate and as sharp as she is kind. And she has such an exciting vision for Brazen. I feel incredibly lucky to be a small part of that.”

Finn of C&W added: “The first time I read Katie’s novel it had me sitting cross-legged on the floor into the early hours, completely absorbed in her narrator’s story, and I am so delighted by Romilly’s connection with and ambition for this heartbreaking, funny debut.”