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Hot Key snaps up Carnegie winner Acevedo in six-figure three-book pre-empt
Bonnier imprint Hot Key has signed CILIP Carnegie winning and New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo in a six-figure three-book pre-empt.
Georgia Murray, commissioning editor and Jane Harris, m.d. of children’s trade publishing, Bonnier Books UK acquired UK and Commonwealth rights for three books from Charlotte Bodman at Rights People. All three novels will be published under the flagship YA imprint Hot Key Books.
Murray said: “Elizabeth is an exceptional writer with a rare talent to speak to young readers; the passion, rawness and authenticity of her voice are remarkable. We are so delighted to have her on the Hot Key list, to have the opportunity to bring her bighearted, heart-breaking and necessary stories to even more readers and to be her UK publishing home.”
The first in the three-book deal is Acevedo’s debut novel in prose and will be published for the first time in the UK on 19th September. With the Fire on High, is the "sumptuous story of 17- year-old Emoni juggling motherhood, school and her passion and talent for cooking – a richly told love letter to mothers, daughters and food," said Bonnier. The novel was published May 2019 by HarperCollins in the US.
The second is Acevedo’s new novel in verse, Clap When You Land. Inspired by real-life events, in 2001 flight AA 587 was travelling to the Dominican Republic and crashed in Queens, New York, killing 260 people; over 90% of the passengers were of Dominican descent and returning home. The novel is a story of two sisters, one in the Dominican Republic, one in the US, who only become aware of each other’s existence when their father dies in a plane crash on his journey from one daughter to the other. The novel will be published in May 2020 simultaneously with the US (HarperCollins).
A third novel, currently untitled, will follow in 2021, publishing simultaneously with the US. The deal comes weeks after Acevedo won the CILIP Carnegie Medal.
Acevedo, who is based in Washington DC, said: “I am delighted to be working with Hot Key and glad that we will endeavour together to bring my future novels to UK readers.”
Harris added: “We are absolutely thrilled to be publishing Elizabeth’s next three books – we have been admiring her from afar and now we have the opportunity to welcome her into the home of YA writing in the UK at Hot Key Books. Her wordplay and alchemy of narrative within her storytelling are sheer magic – she is a shining light whom we are very happy to share."
