Little Island Press signs first US deal

Little Island Press has sold US rights to David Hayden's Darker with the Lights On, in the first North American deal for the indie since it was founded in 2016.

Andrew Latimer, editorial director at Little Island Press, sold US and Canada rights to Hayden’s "long-awaited" short story collection, Darker with the Lights On to Transit Books.

Latimer said: “Joining such esteemed stablemates as Andrés Barba, Jennifer Makumbi and Wioletta Greg, David Hayden’s Darker With the Lights On could not have found a better home than with Transit Books, a relatively new US publisher, run by husband-and-wife super-duo Adam and Ashley Levy, whose star is most definitely in the ascendant.”

Adam Levy, co-founder of Transit Books, said: “We knew we had come across something special when we read David Hayden's startlingly imaginative Darker With the Lights On. We'd never encountered a voice quite like it. Wry, intimate, with a brilliant, subversive power, Hayden's stories bring a sharpness, and a strangeness, to the everyday."

Transit Books will feature Darker With the Lights On in its Spring 2018 list, with publication scheduled for May 2018. Little Island will publish in September 2017.