denise shannon literary agency inc
Foreign rights to titles described below are controlled by DSLA and its co-agents.
LydiaDavis 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****
“Can’t and Won’tis the most revolutionary collection of stories by an American in twenty-five years. Here, indeed, are objects in all their eerie mystery—knapsacks, nametags, rugs, frozen peas—vibrating with possibility; but here, too, is consciousness dramatized in a truly new way, behaving with the stubborn inertia of those very same objects . . . No story writer alive has put sentences under so much pressure, so well, so consistently. In dealing with mortality, though, Davis’s observational gaze has acquired a new warmth and depth.” (John Freeman,The Boston Globe)
“Reading a Lydia Davis story collection is like reaching into what you think is a bag of potato chips and pulling out something else entirely: a gherkin, a peppercorn, a truffle, a piece of beef jerky. Her stories look light and crisp, with their unadorned prose and flat-footed style, but on closer inspection they are pity, knobby, savory, chewy, dense. They are also mordantly, slyly funny in their exposure of human foibles.Can’t and Won’t. . . is evidence of a writer who is in total control of her own peculiar original voice; its pleasures are unexpected and manifold . . . Davis . . . shares with Samuel Beckett a sharp playfulness and antipathy toward ornamentation, as well as a tendency to subvert dramatic expectations that is, in the aggregate, startlingly dramatic.” (Kate Christensen,Elle)
“Her stories are briny and often delicious, after all, though also a bit impudent and stunted. You devour them as if they were on toothpicks…All are wizened and witty in a cosmic way…” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times)
CAN'T AND WON'T is Lydia Davis' first collection since winning the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2013. In a March 2014 New Yorker profile, Dana Goodyear calls Davis’ work “cerebral, witty, well built…” and Davis herself “one of the most original minds in American fiction today.”
Publication date: April 2014
Foreign rights sold: Atlas Contact/Netherlands, Hamish Hamilton/UK, Droschl/Germany, Cappelen Damm/Norway, Munhakdongne/Korea, Bur (RCS)/Italy, Companhia das Letras/Brazil, Edicions del 1984 Publishing House (Catalan)/Spain and Eterna Cadencia Editora/Argentina (World Spanish), Forlaget Vandkunsten/Denmark, Christian Bourgois Editeurs/France.
Foreign rights sold to THE COLLECTED STORIES: Hamish Hamilton/UK, Seix Barral/Spain, Cappelen Damm/Norway, Rizzoli/Italy (published as two volumes), Atlas Contact/The Netherlands (published as two volumes), Relogio d'Agua/Portugal, Chu Chen Books/China and Munhakdongne/Korea.
Lydia Davis Alfred Ollivant’s BOB, SON OF BATTLE: The Last Grey Dog
of Kenmuir (NYRB Children's Classics)
“A modern retelling of Alfred Ollivant's stirring 1898 novel of rival dogs, feuding men and a mysterious sheep-killer. Shorn of its characters' thick accents, and cleared of linguistic brush—erstwhileandhearkenand the like—what comes through is a wrenching, ruggedly beautiful story that might otherwise be inaccessible to current young readers. Though Ms. Davis has pruned the language, she has retained the drama, including harrowing scenes of violence.” (The Washington Post)
“Ollivant’s Bob,Son of Battlepits two sheepdogs and their masters against each other in a bleakly stunning landscape of Cumberland dales that ‘includes moors and ravines, swift streams and lakes; with a little village standing far away in one spot and a sheep-farm alone up on a hilltop in another’….a wonderful achievement.” (Christian Science Monitor)
Lydia Davis returns to one of her favorite childhood books, the classic story of a rivalry between two sheepdogs and their masters and the boy who is caught in the middle. First published in 1898 and set in the northern English countryside, BOB, SON OF BATTLE is “so convincingly told that you simply forget that it isn’t real,”Davis says. Feeling that the prevalence of Cumbrian and Scots dialect and spots of archaic language rendered the story too difficult for modern young readers, Davis“skillfully revived” the classic by adapting and editing the text while maintaining the vivid style and emotionally powerful story of Ollivant’s original.
Film rights have been optioned by Scott Rudin Productions.
(UK rights controlled by NYRB, rest of the world by DSLA and its co-agents)
Publication date: August 2014
Julia Elliott THE WILDS: STORIES (Tin House)
“…a brilliant combination of emotion and grime, wit and horror. The title story is a coming-of-age tale—tree houses, pimples, puberty, and young romance—that eschews convention with just a dash of lycanthropy. In the strong ‘Jaws,’ an adult woman vacations in Orlando with her elderly parents, only to realize as the days click by, how demented her mother has become. Bizarre health resorts populate both ‘Regeneration at Mukti’ and ‘Caveman Diet.’ In the former, participants scab over and shed skin as a way of rejuvenation; while the latter takes the Paleo diet craze to extremes, as men and women don loincloths and learn the ways of prehistoric barbarians in an attempt to lose weight. The ideas of revival and survival appear throughout the collection: ‘LIMBs’ features robotic technology that allows the elderly to walk; ‘The End of the World’ finds a has-been band trying to regroup for one final cash-in; and ‘Rapture’ uses its title’s literal and Biblical definitions to expand the worldviews of two middle-class girls. Elliott’s gift of vernacular is remarkable, and her dark, modern spin on Southern Gothic creates tales that surprise, shock, and sharply depict vice and virtue.”(Publishers Weekly, starred review)
“Sharp and funny, the stories are dark satires on the fad diets and self-absorption of modern life. Elliott shines when it comes to world-building; her details are so dense and vivid the sticky heat of the deep South rises off the page…This book will take you to places you never dreamed of going and aren't quite sure you want to stay, but you won't regret the journey.” (Kirkus review)
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 won the Pushcart Prize and inclusion in BEST AMERICAN FANTASY.
Publication date: October 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. Romie’s plan is full of wild antics that include capturing and stuffing the largest feral hog ever seen in HamptonCounty and making himself the subject of a brain-boosting experiment at the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience.
Manuscript delivery date: December 2014
Aryn Kyle HINTERLAND(Riverhead)
Following the breakout debut THE GOD OF ANIMALS, Aryn Kyle's second novel, 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 could 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 CzechRepublic, Munhakdonge in Korea, Smak Slowa in Poland, Mehta Publishing in India (Marathi), Ediciones Ámbar in Spain, and Aletheia in Portugal.
Manuscript delivery date: December 2014
Reif Larsen I AM RADAR (Penguin Press)
In Reif Larsen’s kaleidoscopic second novel, a love-struck radio operator named Radar Radmanovic discovers a secret society offering mind-bending performance art in war zones around the world. He falls in with the strange group of puppeteers and scientists, and his story becomes entangled with terrible events in Yugoslavia, Norway, Cambodia, the Congo, and beyond. As Radar uncovers the mysterious circumstances of his birth, he is forced to leave the security of suburban New Jersey, where he still lives with his parents, and confront the true nature of his identity. I AM RADAR is a sophisticated, highly addictive reading experience that draws on the furthest reaches of quantum physics, forgotten history, and performance art. The novel is a breathtaking and unparalleled joyride through the worst that humanity has to offer only to arrive at a place of shocking wonder and redemption.
Publication date: February 2015
Foreign rights sold: Harvill Secker/UK, Penguin/Canada, Fischer/Germany, and Editions Nil/France.
Reif Larsen THE SELECTED WORKS OF T.S. SPIVET(Penguin Press)
****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, has been released internationally. Helena Bonham Carter plays the mom, Judy Davis plays Jibsen, and Kyle Catlett made his debut as T.S. Spivet. Co-produced by Epithete Films and Tapioca Films.
“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)
“A ravishing book...One of the few books that I would immediately read again.” (Christine Westermann, WDR 2)
“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, Millenium/Bulgaria, AST-RELease/Russia and Sanoma Media/Hungary.
Ben Marcus, editor UNTITLED ANTHOLOGY OF NEW AMERICAN SHORT STORIES (Vintage)
There is a renaissance of the American short story, and Ben Marcus is at its fore. His new anthology seeks to demonstrate the full range and power of the stories being written here today. By design, it is an artistically diverse collection, which will seek to erase rigid categories of fiction by embracing and refining tradition while finding new ways of structuring narrative. The book includes stories by Denis Johnson, Don DeLillo, Anthony Doerr, Mary Gaitskill, Tao Lin, and some lesser-known names too.
Publication date: April 2015
Foreign rights sold: Granta/UK
Ben MarcusLEAVING THE SEA: STORIES (Knopf)
“The protagonists in Marcus’s new collection of disturbing and excruciatingly funny short stories are socially inappropriate, alienated from their lovers and relatives, anxious, bitter, mortified, lonely . . . The collection’s later stories are more experimental in style and subject matter, but they, too, address themes of isolation and existential inquietude . . . Wrenching.” (The New Yorker)
“Ben Marcus is one of the most stunningly original and profoundly unsettling writers of his generation. His subtle kinks of syntax, his daring choices of individual words and combinations of them, which seem a quarter tone out but somehow wholly right, the reiterated concerns – a pervading sense of guilt, the surrealism of sexuality, dangerous but necessary generational relationships – do not make for easy reading. That is not to say that he is a difficult writer; merely that he deals with strong emotional material in a unique and experimental style. Reading Marcus is liable to induce a kind of literary vertigo. You can't swallow the story whole and move on to the next: the book needs to be set aside between pieces, for the feelings to clarify and the mind to gain some traction on what you have experienced.”(The Guardian)
“Known for his experimental pedigree, the opening stories in Leaving the Sea are uncharacteristically realist for American author Ben Marcus, as if placed there to lure in a reader with tamer taste. But already something is off-kilter. In the black, hook-topped towers that loom over the Cleveland skyline of ‘What Have You Done?’, or the bizarre medical treatment the young man in ‘The Dark Art’ receives, we see hints of the more sinister dystopias yet to be unleashed…Leaving the Sea's final scene left me sucker punched.” (The Observer/UK)
Publication date: January 2014
Foreign rights sold: Granta/UK and Hoffman & Campe/Germany.
Kirstin Valdez Quade NIGHT AT THE FIESTAS: STORIES (Norton)
“Each of these marvelous stories illuminates the messy, tender, unexplored borderland inside us all where our finest virtues bleed into our worst. A brilliant debut.” – Maggie Shipstead
“It’s become cliché to say that a writer’s short stories have the weight of novels, but in Kirstin’s case it happens to be true. She is a story writer of searing vision.” -- Anthony Marra
“Kirstin Valdez Quade is a fantastic writer, both stylish and sagacious. The stories here are taut and tense while at the same time morally complicated, which is to say, they cut sharp and they cut deep. Night at the Fiestas is a book of extraordinary virtuosity.” – Justin Torres
NIGHT AT THE FIESTAS explores a landscape of contradictions shaped by love and loss, wealth and poverty. Set primarily in northern New Mexico, these ten stories reveal a history marked by conquest and re-conquest, and the way in which the native cultures of the area have been at times both romanticized and denigrated. In one story, the deadbeat father of a pregnant teenager tries to transform his life by playing the role of Jesus in a bloody penitential Passion. In another, a young woman finds herself at an impasse when she is asked to hear her priest’s confession. Morally complicated but unrelentingly hopeful, NIGHT AT THE FIESTAS is defined by its strong and visceral sense of place and by its concerns of traditional and heritage, wealth and poverty, family and coming of age.
Kirstin Valdez Quade, originally from New Mexico, was a Jones Fellow and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at StanfordUniversity. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Northwest Review, The Best of the West 2010, Narrative, the Colorado Review, and BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2013. Quade is the recipient of a 2014 O. Henry Prize and teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Publication date: February 2015
Kirstin Valdez Quade UNTITLED NOVEL (Norton)
Quade's first novel is an expansion of her New Yorker story, "The Five Wounds." It opens during Semana Santa (Passion Week) in a small town in northern New Mexico. Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Passion procession, and he is preparing for this role, which he believes will redeem him and transform his life, when his pregnant fourteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up on his doorstep.It is an exploration of the painful complexities of family obligation and is inspired by the work of writers such as Alice Munro and Antonya Nelson. Written in alternating third-person points of view, it is a book about surviving the pressures of personal and cultural history and about the limitations of faith, as the characters discover that their pasts can be a source of both destructive pain and also great sustenance, and that the binds of family are not a birthright but must be constantly made anew.