September nets 'incisive' essays from film director Polley 

September Publishing has secured Run Towards the Danger, a collection of “incisive, charged” essays from Academy Award-nominated film director Sarah Polley.  

Publisher Hannah MacDonald bought UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Jessica Bullock and Sarah Chalfant at The Wylie Agency. The collection will be published on 2nd June 2022, with the e-book release this month.  

Megan Duam at the New York Times has commended Polley as a “sophisticated observer of the world and an imperfect witness to the truth”. Her collection was also praised by Lauren LeBlanc at Vanity Fair as a “propulsive” group of personal essays.  

Polley received an Oscar nomination for her adaptation of Alice Munro’s story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" into the screenplay for “Away from Her”. Other projects include the documentary film “Stories We Tell”. which won the New York Film Critics Circle Prize, the mini-series adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace and the romantic comedy “Take This Waltz”.  

MacDonald said: “Sarah Polley’s writing is tender but very sharp. The book explores her embodied memories of performance and pain, womanhood and sexual threat, mothering and injury, and reading it is a powerful and moving experience. She explores big subjects with precise intimacy; the exploitation of children and women, the fight for care in pregnancy and the after-effects of loss and trauma. Yet the essays culminate in glittering prose, in a joyous run towards the danger of the unknown, breaking away from guarded limits and self-protectiveness we have all adopted, at times, just to survive.”