Inkandescent signs 'frank' memoir from playwright and screenwriter Martin Sherman

Independent publisher Inkandescent has signed US playwright and screenwriter Martin Sherman’s "frank" memoir On the Boardwalk. 

Publisher Justin David and Nathan Evans, co-owner and editor, acquired worldwide rights directly from the author. The memoir will be published with an introduction from actor Ian McKellen, who starred in Sherman’s seminal play "Bent". 

In his "free-ranging" memoir, Sherman takes the reader on a "journey through American in the 20th century" beginning in New Jersey in the 1930s and ending on Broadway with the premiere of "Bent". 

The synopsis continues: "En route, we encounter other famous performers including Meryl Streep, the Bee Gees and Joan Baez, but the scene-stealing character is always his father. We stop off in Woodstock, Los Angeles and London—a city Martin would eventually make home; he relays his story with self-deprecating humour as he struggles to make it in theatre, with his sexuality, and under the shadow of the inheritable disease that killed his mother tragically early – a disease from which he finds himself finally free, as he turns 40 in the book’s closing pages." 

Evans said: "It’s an honour to be working with Martin on his memoir: he’s such an important cultural figure, and a mentor for me, personally. I remember being 19, sat in the back of my parents car surrounded by boxes: I was on my way back to university, learning lines for a play I was in later that term. Mum turned around and asked what it was about; I didn’t need to answer: I simply showed her the cover, with those four bold letters.

"Although it would take her some more months to ask the next question, she knew then; I am just one of the many, many young men – from 1979 right through to the present – who’ve been so emboldened by ’Bent’. This is the story of the man who had the honesty, and the bravery, to write it."