Wren & Rook to publish book on 'bold sportswomen'

Wren & Rook, the non-fiction imprint of the Hachette Children’s Group, has acquired a book celebrating 50 trailblazing women in sport by US author Rachel Ignotofsky.

Liza Miller, senior editor for Wren & Rook, secured UK rights to Women in Sport: Fifty Fearless Athletes Who Played to Win from Claire Posner at Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House US. It will be published in January 2018, ahead of the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February.

The book will chronicle 50 "tough, bold and fearless" sportswomen, from 1800 to today, who have paved the way for today's athletes. It will be highly illustrated profiling trailblazers, Olympians and record-breakers in more than 40 sports. The book will also contain infographics on topics such as muscle anatomy, pay and media statistics for female athletes and influential women's teams.

Specific athletes featured include tennis player Serena Williams and the first female Olympic boxing champion Nicola Adams, as well as "lesser-known pioneers" such as Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, and Keiko Fukuda, the highest-ranked female judoka in history. The author has also created UK-specific content for the UK edition with biographies for Claire Balding, Tanni-Grey Thompson and Katherine Grainger.

It will follow Ignotofsky's Women in Science (Wren & Rook), listing 50 "fearless pioneers who changed the world to inspire the next generation of female scientists, which was published in May.

Miller said: "Rachel’s first book, Women in Science, was the first book Wren & Rook published and it became a bestseller – so we are delighted to have acquired the fantastic follow-up Women in Sport. This is an important and timely celebration of female athletes, who have often been underappreciated or ignored both in the past and today. Rachel’s stunning illustrations and inspirational text make this a must for bookshelves of children and adults alike, and it’s a fantastic addition to Wren & Rook’s list of beautiful, intelligent and empowering titles."