Doubleday bags 'sumptuous' debut novel by 'writer to watch' Warrell

Doubleday has bagged a “sumptuous” debut novel by Laura Warrell. 

Publisher Kirsty Dunseath bought UK and Commonwealth rights to Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm from Serena Lehman at Pantheon. Pantheon will publish this September in the US in a first printing of 200,000 copies with Doubleday’s UK edition to follow in February 2023. 

The publisher described the book as a "sumptuous, multi-voiced novel about the constellation of diverse women surrounding jazz trumpeter, Circus Palmer; about love and longing and all the places in between".

Warrell has been tipped as a "writer to watch" in US magazine Publishers Weekly. Her writing has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Huffington Post, the Rumpus, the Writer, Racialicious, Post Road Magazine, and the Boston Globe. She has taught creative writing and literature at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and through the Emerging Voices program at PEN America in Los Angeles, where she now lives. 

Warrell said: “I’m absolutely thrilled my novel found a home at Doubleday and I look forward to sharing it with audiences in the UK. What an honour.” 

Dunseath added: “This is such a gorgeous, luscious, intelligent novel. There is real emotional depth to this chorus of strikingly complex, sensual women and the flawed man who serves as a catalyst for their stories. I’m absolutely delighted to be working with such a talented author as Laura, and can’t wait to bring her outstanding debut to audiences in the UK.”