Jon McGregor moves to 4th Estate

Man Booker Prize-nominated and IMPAC Award-winning author Jon McGregor has moved to 4th Estate from Bloomsbury in a two-book deal.

HarperCollins imprint 4th Estate will publish Reservoir 13 in April 2017, alongside Mcgregor’s reissued, re-jacketed backlist, under licence from Bloomsbury.

Set in a Derbyshire village, over the course of 13 years after a teenage girl goes missing, Reservoir 13 tells the story of many lives haunted by a stranger's loss. It will be followed in summer 2017 by the transmission over 15 weeks of 15 specially commissioned 'prequel' short stories, "Reservoir Tapes" on BBC Radio 4, which examine the same community before the girl’s mysterious disappearance.  

Reservoir Tapes will then be published as a collection by 4th Estate in the autumn of 2017.

World English rights for the two titles were bought by Tracy Bohan from the Wylie Agency.

Helen Garnons-Williams, publishing director at 4th Estate, said: “Jon McGregor is one of the finest and most original of contemporary British novelists. He has a singular, powerful gift for illuminating the everyday through precise, poetic prose. We could not be more proud to be publishing him at 4th Estate and are particularly excited about the unprecedented way his Reservoir characters will be brought to life on the radio as well as on the page.”

Mcgregor added: "I'm delighted to be working with Helen Garnons-Williams again, and to have joined 4th Estate. They are such a dedicated and imaginative team, and they've made me feel very welcome. Some of the smartest and best-looking books of the last few years have been coming out of 4th Estate, so I'm very much hoping Reservoir 13 will live up to those high standards.”

McGregor is the author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways to Begin, both longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and Even the Dogs, which won the IMPAC Award.

His short story collection This isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You included two stories that were Runners Up for the BBC National Short Story Award in consecutive years.