Playwright Buffini's children's début sets Bologna alight as Faber wins at auction
Playwright and television showrunner Moira Buffini’s speculative YA début trilogy is a contender to be the hit of the 2023 Bologna Children’s Book Fair, with Faber winning a “fierce” UK auction after numerous pre-empts were turned down. HarperCollins swooped in the US, screen rights have been sold and international enquiries are “flooding in”.
Faber editorial director Alice Swan acquired UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) and world translation rights to Buffini’s The Torch Trilogy for “an unprecedented sum” for Faber Children’s. Swan bought the rights from Anwen Hooson at Bird Literary. North American rights were acquired in a pre-empt by Tara Weikum at HarperCollins Children’s from Allison Hellegers at Stimola Literary Studio, on behalf of Bird Literary.
Screen rights were sold to Binocular, the production company founded by Oscar and Bafta-nominated writer Matt Charman; a TV series is already in development.
Hooson called Buffini’s trilogy “that rare thing, a literary début of enormous scale that is thrilling, compulsive and with global appeal”. She added that “the [UK] auction was the one of the hardest I’ve seen as an agent. Rights enquiries have been flooding in from territories, including Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Scandinavia, Poland, Romania and Slovenia”.
Buffini is an Olivier Award-winning playwright and screenwriter whose films include Netflix’s recent “The Dig” and “Jane Eyre”. She co-created and was the showrunner of the Hulu series “Harlots”.
The Torch Trilogy is set thousands of years in the future, in a world where an advanced form of telepathy, Songlight, has emerged. In many parts of this world, those who have Songlight are revered, but in Brightland, the oppressive society where the story is set, it is regarded as a curse. The first book, Songlight, centres on two young women coming of age, bound by Songlight despite having never met in real life. “Out of their depth in a world of cunning politics and war, they must find their voices and stand up to power”.
Songlight will publish in autumn 2024 as a superlead and will be supported by Faber Children’s largest marketing and publicity campaign to date, featuring “immersive and world-building experiential activity”.
Swan said: “We fought tooth and nail for the opportunity to publish this utterly incredible trilogy. The depth and layers and characterisation are extraordinary. Songlight is without question one of the best debut novels I have ever read and I just know that this trilogy is going to become a runaway bestseller.”
Buffini said: “I wanted to write an adventure story in celebration of female friendship; a story for my daughter, for myself when I was young, where the heroines would be caught up in a world of politics, war and global events.”
