Rough Trade and Corsair partner on 'genre-defying' Goodlord by Ella Frears

Independent press Rough Trade Books has snapped up Goodlord by Ella Frears, whose previous work has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize and T S Eliot Prize for Poetry.

Publisher Nina Hervé has acquired world rights from Claudia Young at Greene & Heaton, and the book will be published in hardback on 6th June 2024. Paperback rights have been bought by Sarah Castleton, deputy publisher at Corsair, for publication in April 2025.

"Taking the form of one long email addressed to an estate agent, Goodlord is a fictional memoir of habitation, a genre-defying novelistic text that beautifully evokes the people and places of our lives – the spaces of work, those that may or may not be ‘home’, sites of trauma and ecstasy", the synopsis says. "Showing all the control of voice one would expect from a poet of her rare skill, Ella Frears has created a book that is as funny as it is harrowing, and beautifully skewers the contemporary housing crisis while questioning the fundamental desires, drivers and disappointments that lie at the heart of our obsession with ‘property’."

Will Burns, editor at Rough Trade Books, said: “Ella is one of the most exciting young writers out there, but beyond that, this was work of the very highest order from the off – hilariously funny, profound, sad, angry, timely – just everything that makes a truly great book, and we feel enormously lucky that she has trusted us with it."

Castleton added: "I am pleased to be partnering with Nina and Will at Rough Trade Books in publishing Ella’s blistering longform debut. What she has accomplished here in Goodlord, writing in the voice of a prematurely weary young woman driven to the brink by her landlord’s disingenuous emails, is a cathartic expression of female rage, deadpan humour and confessional honesty, skewering the very ideas of ‘property’ and ‘ownership’ and addressing the incalculable effects these things have on our lives and our sense of selfhood."

Frears commented: “I feel very lucky to have both Rough Trade Books and Corsair behind this – I can’t think of a better combination of radical, rigorous and supportive editors than Nina Hervé, Will Burns, and Sarah Castleton. I feel like I want to throw up and throw a party – meaning, I’m excited and nervous and I can’t wait for this book to find its readers.”