Canongate snares Hale's new novel The Edge of Solitude

Canongate has snared The Edge of Solitude, a "terrifying and thought-provoking" novel on the climate crisis by My Name is Monster (Canongate) author Katie Hale.

Aa’Ishah Hawton acquired world rights, excluding US and Canada, from Lucy Luck at C&W. It will be edited by Leah Woodburn and published in July 2024.

The synopsis says: "Set in a time of acute climate crisis, The Edge of Solitude is a powerful story about the collision of ambition and principle and its devastating repercussions. Fifty years after the collapse of the Antarctic Treaty, disgraced environmental activist Ivy Cunningham finds herself boarding a ship, recruited to a billionaire’s ambitious conservation project.

"Through it, she seeks to salvage her reputation, in the hope it will mend her broken relationship with her son. Yet, as they journey further south, deeper into Antarctica’s beautiful but eerie landscape, Ivy finds herself increasingly tangled in the project’s murky politics, and struggling to tell which relationships are worth trying to save."

Hale won a Northern Debut Award for her recently published poetry collection, White Ghosts (Nine Arches), which traces her maternal lineage and the legacies of slavery. She is a former MacDowell Fellow and winner of the Palette Poetry, Munster Chapbook and Aesthetica Creative Writing prizes. Her short fiction has been longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, and she has held residency posts in seven countries. In addition, Hale is a core team member of the Writing Squad and a winner of the Northern Writers’ Award for Fiction.

Hale said: "Antarctica feels so isolated and otherworldly – yet is integrally connected to weather systems, ocean currents and ultimately to life all across the globe. I was lucky enough to visit the White Continent in 2020, and the fragility of its haunting landscape stayed with me, and inspired The Edge of Solitude. I’m delighted to be back with Canongate for this second novel, and I can’t wait to work with Leah and the team to launch the book on the next stage of its adventure."

Woodburn added: "Katie is such a deft storyteller. In this new novel, she tackles the subject of climate emergency and the human response to it, and injects it with the drive of a thriller. The result is both exhilarating and thought-provoking."