Canongate wins five-way auction for Irvin’s debut novel

Canongate has won a five-way auction for Curtis Brown Creative Writing course alumni Rowe Irvin’s debut novel, Life Cycle of a Moth.

Editor at large Leah Woodburn acquired UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada from Lucy Luck at C&W, and the book is set to publish in spring 2025.

Life Cycle of a Moth is described as "a beautiful, wild and devastating exploration of male violence and maternal love".

The synopsis says: "In a secluded woodland, Maya and Daughter live as a matriarchal community of two. Maya has been raising Daughter in forested isolation, having found sanctuary there after experiencing a terrible act of violence.

"Daughter, though almost 16, has never known any person except Maya, or any place except the woodland where she has grown up. Impulsive, curious and uninhibited by social norms, she experiences her surroundings with the immediacy of bodily sensation: the popping of rabbits’ necks under her fingers, the dirt-sweat scent of her mother in the bed they share. Her understanding of the world is jolted by the arrival of a red-haired stranger, whose presence in the forest threatens to fracture the carefully wrought reality Maya has built to keep her daughter safe."

Irvin has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the Bath Short Story Award, and longlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, the Fish Anthology Poetry Prize and the Bath Flash Fiction Award.

She said: "In writing Life Cycle of a Moth I wanted to be true to the sometimes brutal aspects of Maya and Daughter’s existence and the trauma of what Maya has experienced, while also allowing for real tenderness and joy. I have such affection for these characters, and I am happy to be working with Leah and the team at Canongate in bringing them into the world."

Woodburn added: "Life Cycle of a Moth is a breathtaking debut. It’s haunting but beautiful. To read it is to be immersed in Maya and Daughter’s forest world. I’m so glad that Rowe has entrusted her book to us, and feel very lucky that we will be introducing readers to two of the most compelling characters I’ve met in fiction for a long time."