Dialogue Books wins August Lamm’s fiction début, Lambing Season

Dialogue Books has won August Lamm’s fiction début on building a life in the face of “sudden, unexpected physical limits”.

Editorial director Hannah Chukwu acquired UK and Commonwealth rights for Lambing Season from Holly Faulks at Greene & Heaton, with publication set for March 2025.

The book follows a young woman who is newly disabled and unable to continue her work as an illustrator. “Desperate for stability in the wake of her diagnosis, she follows an impulse to move to rural Wales and become engaged to a near stranger, a misanthropic airplane pilot living in a rundown house to save money while attending flight school,” the synopsis says. “Putting immense faith in the redemptive power of marriage, they sustain their unhappy relationship by cutting themselves off from the wider world, and attempting to forge their own path. It is bitingly funny, tenderly observed and formally innovative.”

Chukwu said: “I fell head over heels for this novel — it is so rare to laugh out loud when reading a submission, and I am consistently in awe of August’s ability to hold the dark and light of life together so effortlessly. August is a wonder, and we are absolutely delighted to be publishing her début novel at Dialogue Books.”

Lamm added: “Lambing Season began with a question: can we choose to fall in love with anyone? Over the course of the writing process, it became clear that the book was actually about what we’re hiding from when we pose questions about love. This is the story of a woman who sees a problematic relationship as an escape from the larger problems of art, body and mind. Who hasn’t made the same mistake?”

Lamm has previously published a non-fiction book on the art technique crosshatching.