Virago signs Oyler’s ‘blistering’ new essay collection

Virago has acquired No Judgement: On Being Critical, a collection of new essays by Lauren Oyler, the author of Fake Accounts (Fourth Estate).

Publishing director Anna Kelly acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein on behalf of Alia Hanna Habib at the Gernert Company.

The publisher says: “In this blistering, addictive and very funny first book of non-fiction, Lauren Oyler takes on the bizarre particularities of our present moment in a series of new essays about literature, the attention economy, gossip, the role of criticism and her own relentless, teeth-grinding anxiety.”

Kelly said: “If you have any interest at all in the weird ways we live and think today, the way the internet gets into our brains, our obsession with rating systems, the complex power dynamics at work in the sphere of artistic creation and its reception, the ways we relate to each other and tell each other stories and gossip and make stuff up (or in the case of novelists, frequently don’t make stuff up) – you will love this book.”

Oyler said: “I’m so happy to be working with Anna Kelly again. Her shrewd and generous work on Fake Accounts made the famously difficult experience of publishing a debut novel a joy. The essays in No Judgement—some of which are quite personal—are in excellent hands at Virago, and I can’t wait to start talking about the book with readers.”

No Judgement will be published in the UK on 7th March 2024 in hardback, e-book and audio edition. HarperCollins will publish in the US on 19th March.