Heckety's 'brilliantly funny' debut goes to Renegade

Dialogue has signed a deal for Alter Ego, the debut novel by Helen Heckety. 

Christina Demosthenous, publisher of Renegade – an imprint of Dialogue – bought UK and Commonwealth rights including audio from Hayley Steed while at Madeleine Milburn, now at Janklow & Nesbit. Alter Ego is scheduled for hardback publication in summer 2024.  

The blurb reads: “Alter Ego is a reading-group novel that tells the story of Hattie, a disabled woman who is sick of being defined by her disability. One fateful night – a New Year’s Eve in London – she is tipped over the edge: Hattie decides to run away and live as an able-bodied person for the first time.  

“Moving to a remote cabin in rural Wales, Hattie hides her disability. Back home, nobody can know her true reason for leaving, and in her new life, nobody can know the truth about her. But it’s not long before she is caught in her lies – trapped between who she really is, and who she so desperately wants to be. As things spiral dangerously out of control, can she piece herself back together?”  

Demosthenous said: “Alter Ego is a novel that has a very special place in my heart. Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with an invisible disability, ME, and I have spent the last decade comparing myself to the imaginary version of me without a chronic illness – so to see my experience reflected in this story brought tears to my eyes." 

She added: “Disability representation in the commercial fiction space is sorely missing, and Alter Ego is an important, ground-breaking story. But even beyond this crucial angle, Alter Ego is a story about the perils of pretending to be somebody you’re not, and the power and freedom of accepting who you truly are.” 

Hecekty said: “I’m so excited to be bringing Alter Ego into the world, with the phenomenal help and support of two amazing women: my literary agent Hayley Steed and my publisher Christina Demosthenous. I could so rarely find myself – as a young disabled woman – represented in fiction, so I decided to write the story I so badly wanted to see on the shelves. I can’t wait to be able to share the novel with readers and hope this paves the way for more disabled writers to be published.” 

Steed said: “Alter Ego is the book I wish had existed when I was 19 and diagnosed with my own chronic illness. Reading Helen’s novel for the first time was an incredibly powerful and moving experience, as it cut through to the heart of what it means to be a young woman with a hidden disability, and to feel understood and heard. It’s also brilliantly funny and poetic, a novel as entertaining as it is important.

"I’m so grateful to Helen for writing it, and for entrusting me with it, and, while this phrase has become overused, I genuinely could not be happier to have found the absolute perfect champion for it in Christina and Renegade.” 

Heckety is a multi-disciplinary writer who is disabled. She has written two one-woman solo shows and toured them across the UK. Her first show was nominated for New Writing South’s Best New Play at Brighton Fringe 2017. Her most recent show premiered at the Southbank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival in 2019. Her debut poetry collection The Underlook  was published in 2021 by The Poetry Business. She was shortlisted for the Jerwood Poetry Fellowship in 2019, and won Gold in Creative Futures Literary Award for her poem "Crack".