Foreign Rights to Titles Described Below Are Controlled by DSLA and Its Co-Agents

denise shannon literary agency inc

Foreign rights to titles described below are controlled by DSLA and its co-agents.

Osama Alomar FULLBLOOD ARABIAN, Preface by Lydia Davis (New Directions Pamphlet Series)

Osama Alomar writes in strange allegories, good and evil battles with indifference, avarice, and occasionally compassion in striking images and glowing language. Alomar's fiction is both hard to pigeon hole and hard to forget. He has published three collections of short stories in Arabic: Ayuha al-insaan (O Man), Rabtat Lisaan (Tongue Tie), and Jami' al-huquq ghayr mahfuza (All Rights Not Reserved); and one volume of poetry qaala insaan al' asir al hadith (Man Said the Modern World). He is a regular contributor to various newspapers and journals in Syria and the Arab world, among them, Tishrin, an-Nur, Spot Light, al-Halil, Adab wa Naqd, and al-Ghad. A prominent practitioner of the Arabic “very short story” (al-qisa al-qasira jiddan), he is a past winner of the Najlaa Muharam Short Story Contest in Egypt (2007). His work has appeared on the BBC Arabic Service. He graduated from the University of Damascus with a degree in modern Arabic Literature. He was born in Damascus in 1968 and now lives in Chicago where he drives a cab. FULLBLOOD ARABIAN is approximately 40 pages in length.

Publication date: January 2014 (manuscript available)

Lydia Davis CAN’T AND WON’T: STORIES (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

**** Winner of 2013 Man Booker International Prize ****

****Winner of the MacArthur (“Genius”) Fellowship****

****National Book Award Finalist for VARIETIES OF DISTURBANCE****

**** Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government****

“One can read a large portion of Davis’s work, and a grand cumulative achievement comes into view—a body of work probably unique in American writing, in its combination of lucidity, aphoristic brevity, formal originality, sly comedy, metaphysical bleakness, philosophical pressure, and human wisdom. “The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) will in time be seen as one of the great, strange American literary contributions, distinct and crookedly personal.” (James Wood, The New Yorker)

“Lydia Davis is one of the best writers in America, a fact that has been kept under wraps by her specialization in short fiction rather than the novel and her discomfort with the idea of one event following another in some sensible pattern, an expectation she frequently plays with, as a kitten will with your fingers. Watch out for those teeth and claws. With the publication of this big book, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Davis might well receive the kind of notice she’s long been due. She is the funniest writer I know.” (Oprah Magazine)

CAN'T AND WON'T is Lydia Davis' fifth collection of short fiction. She is also the author of the novel, THE END OF THE STORY and THE COLLECTED STORIES OF LYDIA DAVIS (which is a compilation of her first four story collections). She is a translator of the French works by Maurice Blanchot and Michael Leiris, as well as a highly-acclaimed new translation of Marcel Proust's SWANN’S WAY for Penguin Classics and, most recently, Gustave Flaubert's MADAME BOVARY. In the last few years, her work has been picked up by many of the finest foreign publishers.

Publication date: April 2014 (manuscript available)

Foreign rights sold: Atlas Contact/Netherlands, Hamish Hamilton/UK, Droschl/Germany, Cappelen Damm/Norway, Munhakdongne/Korea, Bur (RCS)/Italy and Companhia das Letras/Brazil.

Foreign rights sold to THE COLLECTED STORIES: Hamish Hamilton/UK, Seix Barral/Spain, Cappelen Damm/Norway, Rizzoli/Italy (published as two volumes), Atlas/The Netherlands (published as two volumes), Relogio d'Agua/Portugal, Chu Chen Books/China and Munhakdongne/Korea.

Julia Elliott THE WILDS (Tin House)

Debut writer Julia Elliott is an Assistant Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina at Columbia. Her stories have been published in Tin House, Conjunctions, The Georgia Review, The Mississippi Review, and Fence, and have won the Pushcart Prize and inclusion in BEST AMERICAN FANTASY. In 2012, she won the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. Now, her works have been gathered into THE WILDS, a story collection that satirizes the American South with gutsy language play, and skewers our obsession with technological advancement.

Manuscript delivery date: January 2014

Julia Elliott THE NEW AND IMPROVED ROMIE FUTCH (Tin House)

THE NEW AND IMPROVED ROMIE FUTCH is a wild and quirky comic novel set in small town South Carolina that tells the story of a recently-divorced taxidermist who devises an unorthodox strategy to win back his wife. Without going into all the wild and antic developments that ensue, Romie's plan includes capturing and stuffing the largest feral hog ever seen in Hampton County and making himself a subject in a brain-boosting experiment at the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience.

Manuscript delivery date: December 2014

John Keeble THE SHADOWS OF OWLS (University of Washington Press)

John Keeble’s new novel is a literary thriller set in the Idaho Panhandle during a freezing early winter in the year 2000. Kate DeShazer is a biologist pursuing a major research project that puts her on a collision course with government and petroleum industry plans to run a sea-floor pipeline with tie-ins to the existing Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Kate is kidnapped, and her husband, a logger, is swept into a search for her that takes him into the world of white supremacists. While it has shades of Graham Greene-like suspense, the book is at its heart an exploration of a loving relationship put under extreme duress, and the hard test under such circumstances to hold on to one's principles.

John Keeble has been called one of the major writers of the Pacific Northwest. About his early novel, the national bestseller YELLOWFISH (Harper & Row, 1980), Raymond Carver said, “Yellowfish is, without qualification or hedging, a great work of imaginative literature…This is the one.” The author’s most recent book publication was a story collection, NOCTURNAL AMERICA, published in 2006 by the University of Nebraska Press.

Publication date: September 2013

Aryn Kyle HINTERLAND (Riverhead)

Aryn Kyle's second novel (following the breakout debut THE GOD OF ANIMALS), HINTERLAND is the story of a turbulent platonic friendship between a married father and the gifted, troubled, charismatic woman he’s known since college, and how her sudden death -- one he feels he should have saved her from -- changes the course of his life and that of his family.

THE GOD OF ANIMALS, her bestselling and highly-acclaimed first novel, was praised as “so strong, startling, and moving...it is impossible to forget” by The Boston Globe. It sold to Rizzoli in Italy, Weidenfeld & Nicolson in UK, Nieuw Amsterdam in The Netherlands, Gallimard in France, Goldmann in Germany, Ecus in Taiwan, Editora Rocca Ltda in Brazil, Shanghai 99 in China, Olympia in Czech Republic, Munhakdonge in Korea, Smak Slowa in Poland, Mehta Publishing in India (Marathi), Ediciones Ámbar in Spain, and Aletheia in Portugal.

Manuscript delivery date: December 2013

Reif Larsen I AM RADAR (Penguin Press)

Following his highly praised debut, THE SELECTED WORKS OF T.S. SPIVET, Reif Larsen is now nearing completion of a second novel. I AM RADAR follows Radar Radmanovic, a love-struck epileptic radio operator from the Meadowlands of New Jersey. Radar still lives with his mother, Charlene, an ex-librarian with a heightened sense of smell, and his father, Kermin, a Serbian immigrant whose pocket television repair business has recently collapsed. Prompted by tragedy at home, Radar begins to uncover the mysterious medical circumstances of his birth and his father's involvement with a secretive society of scientists and avant-garde puppeteers. His search will take him far from New Jersey and into the heart of genocide, forcing him to confront the true nature of his identity. Part international mystery, part love story, part family drama, I AM RADAR investigates how we define our differences and how we might begin to articulate our sameness.

Publication date: Spring 2015

Foreign rights sold: Harvill Secker/UK, Penguin Canada

Reif Larsen THE SELECTED WORKS OF T.S. SPIVET (Penguin Press/ Penguin)

****International Bestseller****

****Guardian First Book Award shortlist****

****South African Boeke shortlist ****

****Borders Original Voices Fiction finalist ****

****Montana Book Award Honor Book ****

****James Tait Black Memorial Prize Finalist****

****Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis 2010 Finalist****

****Prix Amerigo Vespucci 2010 Winner (France)****

The film adaptation, titled THE YOUNG AND PRODIGIOUS SPIVET, directed and written by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, will have its world premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival on September 28th and will be released throughout the 28 territories where it has sold soon thereafter. Helena Bonham Carter plays the mom, Judy Davis will play Jibsen (gender change!) and Kyle Catlett will make his debut as T.S. Spivet. Co-produced by Epithete Films and Tapioca Films. Several of Larsen's publishers will be issuing film tie-in editions.

“Two predictions about The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet: readers are going to love it as much as I did, and few if any will have experienced anything like it. I'm flabbergasted by Reif Larsen's talent….Here is a book that does the impossible: it combines Mark Twain, Thomas Pynchon, and 'Little Miss Sunshine.' Good novels entertain; great ones come as a gift to the readers who are lucky enough to find them. This book is a treasure.” (Stephen King)

“Reif Larsen’s debut novel combines meticulous eccentricity with an amazingly broad appeal: the tale of a child prodigy with an obsessive interest in mapmaking and scientific illustration, it’s as loveable as it is odd, while the book is a thing of beauty in itself.” (The Guardian)

“Meet T.S. Spivet, not Eliot, and prepare for an imaginative, just-about-plausible odyssey that succeeds in being about many things: information, the imagination, America, grief, adventure, the past, celebrity--everything, life itself....One thing is certain: Reif Larsen's wonderfully original debut, destined to please readers of all ages, is The Next Big Thing, and, for once, The Next Big Thing appears far less opportunistic than it usually does.” (The Irish Times)

“Beautifully designed and obsessively laid out--what can one say with mere words, after all, when the subject of one's words is a text that incorporates as marginalia scientific diagrams, heartbreaking sketches, sweeping illustration, and nuanced cartography....Larsen's debut is everything one could hope for from such an expansively composed volume: it is by turns beautiful, moving, witty, informative, mysterious, and devastating.” (The Walrus)

“A ravishing book...One of the few books that I would immediately read again.” (Christine Westermann, WDR 2)

“Under the packaging of its sophisticated design, is warm Bildungsroman. A great demonstration of what a good old-fashioned story can be.Niemals wird ein E-Book eine solche Schatzkarte sein.«” (Stern)

“By the latest wunderkind of American literature.... above all, a funny and touching book that you are never too old to be charmed by.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Publication date: May 2009

Foreign rights sold: Penguin/Canada, Mondadori (Strade Blu)/Italy, Fischer/Germany, Lindhardt & Ringhof/Denmark, Ailantus/The Netherlands, Cappelen Damm/Norway, Emily Publishing Co. (complex)/Taiwan, Harvill Secker/UK, Forum/Sweden, Nova Fronteira/Brazil, Seix Barral/Spain, Gimm-Young/Korea, Kinneret-Zmora/Israel, Robert Laffont (NiL)/France, Shanghai 99 (simple)/China, Hayakawa/Japan, Fraktura/Croatia, Dolnoslaskie/Poland, Presença/Portugal, Euromedia (Odeon)/Czech Republic, Ikar/Slovak Republic, Geopoetika/Serbia, Vellant/Romania, Arkadas/Turkey, Arab Scientific Publishers (Arabic rights)/Lebanon, Millenium/Bulgaria, AST-RELease/Russia and Sanoma Media/Hungary.

Ben Marcus LEAVING THE SEA: STORIES (Knopf)

“The second collection from Marcus (The Flame Alphabet) is a peculiar, funny, original analysis of the human psyche and modern language. Split into six parts, the volume fluctuates between traditional narrative…and more experimental fare…Communication is important to the author, and throughout, characters employ unusual linguistic skills, renaming common tasks and speaking about common phrases as if they are alien…The protagonists of most of the stories are men, and often their conflicts are flared by worried, overactive imaginations…A very strong collection.” (Publishers Weekly)

From the author of THE FLAME ALPHABET, which has been called a “well-oiled heartbreak machine” by New York Magazine and “thrillingly subversive” by Vanity Fair, comes a new collection of stories previously published in The New Yorker, Granta, Harper’s, and The Paris Review. Here, in "The Loyalty Protocol," a late night drill slowly becomes more than just a test; in "I Could Say Many Nice Things" a writing seminar on a cruise ship takes a stab at creating and erasing identity; and in "What Have You Done?" a man leads a double life at a family reunion, despite his best intentions. Both funny and unsettling, Marcus’s language is the real astonishment, making ordinary objects and emotions into mysteries and marvels.

Publication date: January 2014 (manuscript available)

Foreign rights sold: Granta/UK and Hoffman & Campe/Germany.

Ben Marcus THE FLAME ALPHABET (Knopf)

“Ben Marcus is the rarest kind of writer: a necessary one. It's become impossible to imagine the literary world---the world itself--without his daring, mind-bending and heartbreaking writing.” (Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

“One of our most audacious and inventive writers, Ben Marcus, catches fire in his thrillingly subversive The Flame Alphabet.” (Vanity Fair)

“Quite simply, one of the most powerful works of fiction it has ever been my privilege to read….It is an unforgettable experience.” (Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman)

At first it’s just Jews—then everyone. People are leaving their families to survive. Sam’s wife, Claire, is already stricken and near death. In a year or two, as she grows into adulthood, their daughter, Esther, too, will become a victim. Sam and Claire decide to leave Esther on her own, hoping a “cure” will miraculously appear. Sam’s car is waved off the road at a government-run laboratory where horrific tests are being conducted to create non-lethal speech. Throngs bang on the doors to be subject volunteers; they’re all carried out half-dead. When Sam realizes what’s going on, he makes a desperate escape, vowing that if he dies it will be with his family, the only refuge of sanity and love. Marcus’s nightmarish vision is both completely alien and frighteningly familiar.

Publication date: January 2012

Foreign rights sold: Sam & Parkers/Korea, Hoffmann & Campe/Germany, Granta/UK, il Saggiatore/Italy, LeYa/Brazil, Editions du Sous-Sol/France, Lengua de Trapo/Spain and Pelikanen Forlag/Norway.

James Oseland JIMMY NEUROSIS: A Memoir (Ecco)

Preempted by Ecco Press, this coming-of-age memoir by James Oseland, editor-in-chief of Saveur Magazine and judge on Bravo channel’s hit television series, “Top Chef Masters," charts the author's drastic transformation from punk adolescent to celebrated culinary editor. He was born in Mountain View, California, dropped out of high school at 15 and plunged into the burgeoning punk rock/drugs/gay sex scenes of 1970's San Francisco and New York. He later went to graduate school in film studies and made his way to a career in writing and magazines (among them, Vogue, LA Weekly, The Village Voice and Sassy, before Saveur). It's fascinating and extraordinarily moving to see how, after the dramatic destruction of these key years, Oseland discovers within himself the creative threads that ultimately lead him to renown in the magazine and food worlds.