Picador signs Clein's 'fierce and endlessly curious' eating disorders investigation

Picador has signed an “electric, fierce and endlessly curious” investigation of eating disorders by Emmeline Clein.

Editorial director Andrea Henry acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, for Dead Weight from Claire Roberts at Claire Roberts Global Literary Management, on behalf of Monika Woods at Triangle House. It was pre-empted in the US by Vanessa Haughton at Knopf and publication will be simultaneous in spring 2024.

The publisher explained: “Emmeline Clein’s own story of disordered eating began when she was just 12. In Dead Weight, alongside her own experience and through the stories of other women—famous figures from across time and popular culture, girls she’s known and loved—she traces the medical and cultural history of anorexia, bulimia and orthorexia.

“In writing that is electric, fierce and endlessly curious, Clein investigates the economic conditions underpinning our eating disorder epidemic, grapples with the myriad ways disordered eating has affected her own friendships and romantic relationships, and illuminates how today’s feminism has been complicit in disordered eating culture. Through it all, she challenges the accepted narratives women absorb every day about themselves, unearthing the pernicious messages that connect female worth to inhabiting an ever-smaller form.”

Clein is a writer whose criticism, essays and reporting have been published in outlets including the Smithsonian, Buzzfeed, Vice, the Nation and Lit Hub. Her work explores the intersection of disordered eating, diet culture and contemporary feminism, blending history, cultural criticism and memoir. 

She said: “From childhood, girls are taught to mistrust and subvert our appetites in pursuit of a beauty ideal predicated on misogyny and racism. I’m so excited to work with Picador on a book that will explore the artifacts, icons, ideology and epidemiology of this dangerous culture of disordered eating, in the hope of emerging on the other side with new, communal and feminist understandings of our bodies.”

Andrea Henry, editorial director at Picador, said: “Our relationship with food, and the way women’s bodies look and work, is a subject that never slips far from our minds. In a world where the young live so much online and are being served up impossible beauty standards to aspire to, and are absorbing dangerous messages about the need to be thin, it feels important to explore where we are now at. Dead Weight is a much-needed updated look at our eating-disorder culture in the internet era. It’s a fresh, urgent and quite stunning piece of writing. We are delighted to welcome Emmeline Clein to Picador.”