September Publishing snaps up Maya Jordan's 'rallying' new book

September Publishing has snapped up Maya Jordan’s “rallying” new book The Emergency Chicken & Other Stories. 

Told in three parts, Maiden, Mother and Crone, it is billed as "a sharply funny, moving and rousing account of a life lived in (ultimately triumphant) opposition to the limitations of a working-class woman’s life”. 

Hannah MacDonald acquired world English language rights from Natalie Jerome at The Originate Literary Agency and will publish in 2026. 

Selected by A Writing Chance, a programme launched by actor and writer Michael Sheen with New Writing North to support working-class and underrepresented writers, Jordan’s work has been performed by Sheen for BBC Radio Wales’ “Margins to Mainstream” and was highlighted by him in a recent Tedx Talk Levelling the cultural playing field. 

Jordan said: “I am so excited to be working with September Publishing and my brilliant agent Natalie Jerome. It’s no exaggeration to say that I would not have written a memoir if it wasn’t for A Writing Chance. The lack of visibility of women like me, as characters or writers of books meant that while I loved reading I was stood outside looking in. Books, it seemed, were not written by people like me, about people like me. A Writing Chance opened the door. This is why representation matters. We need to see and hear all our voices. We all have stories to tell. If we don’t get to tell our stories ourselves, then they tell them about us. And they always get it wrong." 

MacDonald added: “Maya’s voice is strong and urgent, but also sharp and sweet and funny. This will be a rallying book for female readers, who recognise those feelings of invisibility, obstruction and exploitation and those harsh, lived experiences at the intersection of class, inequality, danger and sexism. Whether patronised at school or insulted in a doctor’s surgery, every woman can recognise those moments of both insult and ensuing anger and will relish in Maya’s journey to self-realisation.”