Jonathan Cape snaps up debut novel from prize-winning poet Hewitt

Prize-winning poet Seán Hewitt’s début novel, Open, Heaven, has been snapped up by Jonathan Cape within 48 hours of submission with the title being sold via pre-empts and auctions in several markets. 

Cape senior commissioning editor Alex Russell acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Matthew Marland at RCW two days after an exclusive submission. Cape has published the Warrington-born, Dublin-based Hewitt’s poetry since his début collection, Tongues of Fire, in 2020.   

Meanwhile, North American rights went to Jordan Pavlin at Knopf from Adam Eaglin at The Cheney Agency on behalf of RCW in a “highly competitive” auction. Suhrkamp Verlag pre-empted the novel in Germany while it has gone to De Arbeiderspers in the Netherlands and at auction to Einaudi Stile Libero in Italy.

Cape describes Open, Heaven as “a stunning, exquisitely beautiful novel about being on the brink of adulthood and diving into love for the first time”. It follows James “a sheltered, shy 16-year-old living in a small village, Thornmere, in the north of England” who is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, “full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced”. When he meets the troubled, charismatic Luke, he is immediately drawn to him. Over the course of a fateful year, James must discover what he is willing to sacrifice for a love that may or may not be real.

Cape has also published Hewitt’s memoir All Down Darkness Wide⁠—which explores the pain of young love⁠—and will release a new collection of his poetry, Rapture’s Road, in 2024. Penguin UK has recently released his and illustrator Luke Edward Hall’s 300,000 Kisses, a compendium of queer love stories from the ancient world.  

Hewitt was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2022 and has been nominated for a host of further prizes, including the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Biography of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards and the Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Hewitt lectures at Trinity College Dublin. 

Russell said: “[Hewitt] transports us to a vivid landscape with gorgeous, powerful storytelling on love and its many forms, on the bewilderment and joys of youth, and on masculinity and queer life. Seán writes about the human emotional terrain like no one else.”

Hewitt added: “I’ve wanted to write this story for a long time, and I can’t wait for readers to meet James and Luke in Thornmere.”