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Virago has acquired Deborah Frances-White's second book, Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have–from The Guilty Feminist.
Frances-White's first book, The Guilty Feminist, was published by Virago in 2018, and was inspired by the author's podcast of the same name. It sold 34,431 copies across all editions via Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market in the UK.
The Guilty Feminist's second book will "face up to one of the biggest challenges in feminism right now – how we can have difficult conversations well, how we can disagree well, how we can build bridges and change minds, including our own", says the publisher.
Sarah Savitt, publisher, bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Victoria Hobbs at A M Heath, with publication scheduled for summer 2022.
Savitt, publisher, said: "The Guilty Feminist has been a great success at Virago and I’m excited that Deborah will now be tackling new arguments in her clear-eyed, open-minded way. She’s a brilliant writer who brings her comic genius and empathy to the page and we are excited to make Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have a landmark publication next year."
Frances-White commented: "It’s a joy and a privilege to work with Virago and Six Conversations… is a book I simply have to write. This is a dialogue I’ve been having with those I trust in private for a long time. This is a conversation I need to be brave enough to have in public. I am part of a movement that has called Time’s Up on top-down power at the expense of those who have been used and discarded. I want to live in a world where people in marginalised groups have a real voice that enacts fast change. I also speak as someone whose formative years were spent in a high control group, where people rarely said what they meant. We said what we needed to, to avoid punishment and shunning which meant our words often didn’t match our thoughts and actions. I know what that fosters and where it ends.
"I feel compelled to look at the way our society is changing and look at how we can mature together and build better, stronger, more usable bridges more quickly to make the world a genuinely better place for those who desperately need it to be. And isn’t that all of us right now?"