Gollancz snaps up debut dystopian trilogy from Holly D Ahearne

Gollancz has snapped up the debut dystopian trilogy from Holly D Ahearne. Zakirah Alam acquired UK & Commonwealth rights in a three-book deal for The Dark Isle from Suzannah Ball at the WME.

The story follows a healer on an undercover mission to the mysterious Dark Isle. She quickly finds herself swept away by the idyllic women’s world, where misandry is mandatory. However, all is not as it seems – a female militia rule, and men are unwillingly used for reproduction in an underground prison. Morality, ambition and love battle for supremacy, pushing the healer’s loyalties to the limit.

Ahearne said: "The UK’s number one SFF imprint wants to publish me! Winning The Orwell Society’s Dystopian Fiction Prize has driven me to spend the past decade developing my original short story Etanidrobus into The Dark Isle. I’m so grateful that academic Julie Wheelwright and City St George’s encouraged me to enter the competition, that WME’s Suzannah Ball is such an effective cheerleader for my writing and that Zakirah Alam is inviting me to join Gollancz’s cabal of genre-disrupting voices that will be published in their centenary year."

Ahearne is the director of Domney Books, the pre-publication commercial fiction business she launched just three years ago, and through which she has helped numerous authors prepare for publication. Her professional career in fiction started by selling books at the retail counter of Waterstones. In 2021 she was recognised by the Printing Charity as a Rising Star of the publishing industry.

Alam said: "From the moment I read the premise, I knew this would be a book I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about – and I was quickly proven right. The Dark Isle is everything I’ve been looking for and I just can’t wait to publish it in the UK."

The Dark Isle is the first of Holly D Ahearne’s manuscripts ever offered for publication and will be launched globally in hardcover, export trade paperback, e-book and audiobook in spring 2027.