Canongate nabs Clement’s tale of two cities and their artists

Canongate has nabbed Jennifer Clement’s memoir, The Promised Party: Kahlo, Basquiat and Me, a "tale of two cities and their artists".

Publisher at large Francis Bickmore acquired UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights to Clement’s memoir from Elizabeth Sheinkman at Peters, Fraser and Dunlop Agency. Canongate will publish The Promised Party in January 2024.

Growing up in ’60s Mexico City, Clement lived next door to Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s house. The synopsis says: "An unorthodox childhood to say the least, she lived a bohemian life alongside artists, communists, revolutionaries and poets, one that allowed an awakening of a creative freedom and curiosity about the world.

"Leaving behind the revolutions in Latin America for the burgeoning counter-culture scene in ’80s New York, she quickly becomes a fixture in the art scene, inhabiting the world of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Colette Lumiere and William Burroughs, among others, and frequenting The Mudd Club, Danceteria and Studio 54. 

"From the author of cult classic Widow Basquiat, this memoir recreates the fury, ecstasy and danger that made ’70s Mexico City and ’80s New York two of the greatest places to be living, young and free."

Clement is the author of multiple books, including Widow Basquiat (Canongate) and Gun Love (Hogarth Press), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages around the world.

Clement is also the recipient of many awards including the Sara Curry Humanitarian Award, the Grand Prix des Lectrices Lyceenes de ELLE in France, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a NEA Fellowship. Her books have twice been a New York Times Editor’s Choice Book, and as of 2022, she completed her six-year term as the president of PEN International as the first woman to be elected since the organisation was founded in 1921.

She said: "The Promised Party is a portrait of familial and historical events that made me a writer. Therefore, while the memoir may be personal, it is also documents on life and art in two cities at exceptional moments in their history. Ever since 2000 when Canongate published Widow Basquiat, my first book (linked profoundly to The Promised Party), I have had their editorial support.

"For 23 years this remarkable relationship has allowed me to be courageous and experimental and is a central part of my trajectory."

Bickmore added: "The Promised Party, like its older sibling Widow Basquiat, is a book about what it takes to be an artist. Powered by kinetic storytelling, it carries us from ’70s bohemian Mexico City to ’80s art scene New York, literally from Frida Khalo’s bathtub to Jean Michel Basquiat’s fridge.

"Jennifer Clement is our irrepressible tour guide, a poet and artist whose life story will inspire the next generation of artists to fear nothing and risk everything."