flipped eye publishing, the highly-respected UK indie known for introducing the world to the début books of writers like Malika Booker, Inua Ellams, Warsan Shire, Nick Makoha, Katie Hale and Roger Robinson, has just made its first ever rights acquisition from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Nathalie Handal’s Life In A Country Album, just released in the United States, will be released in the UK in early 2020.
Described by former US poet laureate Tracy K. Smith as reminiscent “of the irresistible spare stylization of French New Wave cinema,” Life In A Country Album is Handal’s seventh poetry collection and perhaps her most expansive, distilling the perspectives of her perambulatory life into “urgent and ineffable truths” (Claire Messud). Some of Handal’s notable books are The Republics (2015), Poet in Andalucia (2012) and Love and Strange Horses (2010). She is a Lannan Foundation Fellow, teaches at Columbia University and is the editor of The City and the Writer for Words without Borders magazine.
UK and Commonwealth rights to Life In A Country Album were bought from the Pitt Poetry Series and it is the first acquisition by Mitchell Albert, newly appointed by flipped eye publishing to be the lead director of fiction and non-fiction publishing. Publication is scheduled for April 2020.
Director Nii Ayikwei Parkes said: “For the longest time, flipped eye has been known as a development indie. We’ve worked with some of the major names in UK literature at the start of their careers, but we feel like it’s time for a new dimension to our work. I’ve long been an admirer of Nathalie Handal’s work and to get Mitch to join our team and acquire Nathalie’s new book in one fell swoop feels like a double win for me. It’s just the kind of marker we want to signal that we will be shaking up publishing even more.”