William Collins signs Sophia Smith Galer’s How to Kill a Language

William Collins has acquired an exploration of how languages die out, and how we can revive them, by journalist and content creator Sophia Smith Galer.

Commissioning editor Eva Hodgkin bought UK and Commonwealth rights to How to Kill a Language from Emma Smith at the Wylie Agency, with publication scheduled for Spring 2026.

The publisher description reads: “In the next century, up to half of the world’s 7000 languages will die. Language death, known as linguicide, can happen gradually as languages evolve. But in our globalised world, transformed by migration and conflict, linguicide is no accident – and it is accelerating at a disturbing rate.

“Sophia Smith Galer has experienced language loss first-hand. Her grandparents, migrants to Britain from Emilia-Romagna, brought Emilian with them, one of Italy’s many minority languages which is now fast disappearing. With this personal mission in mind, Smith Galer has travelled from Ghana to California, Greece to Ecuador, to uncover the different ways languages are endangered, and meet the language activists fighting to preserve their heritage. How to Kill A Language is a passionate, persuasive rallying cry for language diversity, offering hope that a multilingual world, and future, is possible.”

Sophia Smith Galer, whose first book – Losing It: Sex Education for the 21st Century – was published by William Collins in 2022, said: “I have been travelling the world, as well as deep into my own family history, to tell these stories; our languages represent much more than simply the words we speak, though you wouldn’t think that if you considered how little we speak of language death and endangered languages.

“Even as I write ‘linguicide’, my computer has drawn a red squiggle under it, like the word is a mistake. It is not – it is one of the most misunderstood tragedies of our time, and a significant threat to global unity and understanding.”

Hodgkin added: “The decline of languages and the rise of monocultures is an incredibly important untold story with massive global resonance. It’s an urgent issue for all of us, regardless of what language we speak, since when we lose language we lose a wealth of local knowledge. I’m so glad to be collaborating with Sophia at William Collins on this project that we both believe in deeply, to celebrate everything we can learn from speaking other languages. She is such an impressive writer and thinker, who combines in-depth research with rich storytelling and a massive, engaged online audience. I can’t wait to get started.”