Elliott & Thompson nabs 'visceral' motherhood memoir by Helen Jukes  

Elliott & Thompson has snapped up Mother, Animal by Helen Jukes, a memoir about pregnancy, birth and early parenthood that looks into the lives of human and other animal mothers. Publishing director Sarah Rigby acquired UK & Commonwealth rights from Jessica Woollard at David Higham Associates. The book will be published in hardback and e-book in early 2025, with a paperback to follow.

Mother, Animal is about Jukes who, struggling to find information to help her navigate pregnancy, turns to looking at animals. Motherhood is explored drawing from evolutionary biology, zoology, toxicology and climate science. The publisher described it as a “passionate, visceral and radical account of a body changed”.

Rigby said: “I have long admired Helen’s open and generous writing, which invites us to see life in unexpected ways. Tender yet fierce, Mother, Animal will offer a startling new vision of motherhood: diverse, wild, intimate; as contested and extraordinary as the world in which we live. Her premise: that the much overlooked mothering body – both human and non-human – is worthy of our urgent observation and attention”.

Jukes is the author of the memoir A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings, and her forthcoming book, Mother, Animal, has been awarded grant funding by Arts Council England. She currently teaches on the Creative Writing programme at the University of Oxford, and is a guest lecturer at the University of Nottingham.

Jukes added: “Mother, Animal will put words to an experience and a body of research that has affected me deeply. It’s a huge privilege to be working with Sarah Rigby and the team at Elliott & Thompson, and I hope the book’s release will connect up with a wider call to action on what are some of the most pressing issues of our time.”