Profile and Wellcome sign Unsworth's postnatal depression memoir

Profile Books and the Wellcome Collection have signed the “searingly honest” memoir by Emma Jane Unsworth about postnatal depression.

Helen Conford, Profile publisher, acquired world rights from Clare Conville at the Conville & Walsh Agency for After the Storm. It will be published in 2021 as part of the Wellcome Collection’s Life Lines series, which publishes writers on health and being human.

Inspired by the response to her Guardian article on the subject, Unsworth hopes the book will “crack the silence” on it. 

She said: “I couldn't find anything to read about it when I was lost in the darkness. I hope it will be a resource as well as a memoir. I think we need to talk more and more about all aspects of motherhood, especially the awful and difficult bits.”

Unsworth added, although she wanted the book to be helpful to people going through postpartum depression, letting them know they are not alone, there will also be humour. She said: “I want to write a funny book about depression. There will be laughter from the depths of the abyss. Manic laughter, perhaps, but laughter.”

The author and screenwriter’s first novel, Animals (Canongate), became a major motion picture and her latest, Adults (The Borough Press), has just been released.

Conford said: “Having children can return women to their bodies and minds in ways that profoundly alter them and sometimes destabilise them. I read Emma’s long read on postnatal depression with my heart in my mouth at the honesty and warmth and necessity of what she was saying. Wellcome’s Life Lines series sees the world’s finest storytellers write on health and being human. After the Storm will be a touchstone book for people searching to find themselves again.”