Cipher signs Gavin's 'revelatory' novel

Cipher Press has landed Never Was, a novel exploring identity, queerness and trans masculinity by Honor Gareth Gavin. 

Publisher Jenn Thompson acquired world rights in a deal struck directly with the author. It will publish on 16th March 2023. 

Set in a working-class, salt mining town in the the north of the UK, it follows Daniel as he tells the story of his childhood to Fin, relating the losses of his father and estranged cousin.

The synopsis explains: "Taking us from bus shelters to playgrounds to McDonalds, from the depth of a salt mine to a nightclub toilet, Daniel describes their world of soap operas, sunglasses, newspaper clippings and Princess Diana, steering Fin through the events that led up to the Great Subsidence, when their town and the mine that sustained it collapsed.

"As Daniel tells their story, they come to learn they’re in a place called Never Was, a limbo for lost dreams and disappointments, a landfill for things that never came to be, but also a place of change and transition."

The publisher said: "Dreamy, poignant, and revelatory, Never Was is a bewitching and inventive novel by an inimitable voice in literary fiction."

Gavin is a writer from Birmingham. Midland: A Novel Out of Time (Penned in the Margins, 2014) was shortlisted for the 2015 Gordon Burn Prize and short story Home Death was longlisted for the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize 2019-20. Funny Queer, a hand-sewn limited edition collection of stories, was published by the Aleph Press in 2021. The author’s work has appeared in publications such as Hotel, Short Fiction, the Architectural Review, and Prototype.