Jo Fletcher Books swoops for poet Williams’ eco-fable The Night Field 

Jo Fletcher Books has acquired poet, educator and environmentalist Donna Glee Williams’ “powerful, magical eco-fable” The Night Field. 

Publisher Jo Fletcher acquired world rights from Richard Curtis, of Richard Curtis Associates, for publication simultaneously in the UK and North America by Jo Fletcher Books and Mobius in July 2024.

In The Night Field, Pyn-Poi, a tree-whisperer, must dare the treacherous climb to the land above the Wall, where the Ancestors live, to stop the stinking blight that is poisoning her people, their crops and their trees, the publisher’s synopsis reads.

Pyn-Poi expects to find a whole new world up there, but the reality is stranger and more dangerous than she could ever have imagined. 

Williams, a Pushcart Prize nominee and Fulbright Fellow, said: “For me, being received into the Jo Fletcher Books family is like coming home: sharing a vision of world healing through story and positioning The Night Field to have a strong voice in the global conversation about cultural and environmental degradation. 

“And getting to work with Jo Fletcher, who for 17 years edited Ursula K Le Guin, my hero since college days and the author to whom my writing is most often compared – what else could an author ask for?”

Fletcher said: “Just start reading this delicious, devastating literary eco-fantasy novel and you will be drawn into the most astonishing world, and into an exciting, heartbreaking, desperately real adventure that runs through joy and despair to, ultimately, hope (although not at all where we thought it would be).

“It’s timely, and gripping, and special, and everyone at JFB and Quercus is so excited to be able to welcome Donna Glee to the fold.”