Fourth Estate swoops 'illuminating' second book from Hayden

Fourth Estate will publish Sally Hayden’s second book, I Loved You Then and Still Love You Now, which it describes as “an extraordinary account of love and strength in the hardest places”.

Jo Thompson bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Patrick Walsh at Pew Literary, with Christopher Richards of Scribner pre-empting the US rights within 24 hours of submission. 

Journalist Sally Hayden’s debut, My Fourth Time, We Drowned, follows the accounts of refugees seeking sanctuary, and won the Orwell Prize, the Michel Déon Prize, Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the overall prize for Irish Book of the Year on it’s release in 2022.

Hayden’s second book will once again build on her journalism, this time reporting from some of the most fractured places in the world in order to reveal stories of love, bravery and humanity. 

The synopsis reads: “How do you love in a war, through separation, fear, pain and the passage of time? How does the best of humanity survive against the cruellest circumstances? Hayden will unfold narratives of mothers taking enormous risks to protect their daughters from terrorist units, LGBT+ couples finding love in countries where their relationships are illegal, tsunami survivors travelling hundreds of miles to remember their spouses, and genocide survivors forming new families for life.”  

Thompson described I Loved You Then and Still Love You Now as a “moving, illuminating read”, while Richards called it a “radical counternarrative to the dread and peril of our moment”. 

Hayden added: “I am so grateful to be working again with Jo Thompson and Fourth Estate, who were incredibly supportive with My Fourth Time, We Drowned, and I’m very excited to be releasing this new book with Christopher Richards and Scribner as well. I’ve been ruminating on the idea and gathering stories for it since before I began writing the last book. I hope these accounts of love might touch and inspire readers, but also might make them realise that humans all over the world have more in common than we may sometimes appreciate.”

Hayden is an award-winning journalist and photographer focused on migration, conflict and humanitarian crises. At 33, she is currently the Africa correspondent for the Irish Times, though she has reported for almost every major international broadcaster and publication. A law graduate with an MSc in international politics, she has twice sat on the committee deciding the winner of Transparency International’s Anti-Corruption Award. In 2019, she was included on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of media figures in Europe.