Press release

HarperCollins announced today that Zoe Whittall has signed a two-book deal with the company. Whittall’s most recent novel, The Best Kind of People, was shortlisted for the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize and was selected as Indigo’s #1 Best Book of 2016. It was also named a Best Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail, the National Post, The Walrus and Toronto Life. Her upcoming novel is The Spectacular, scheduled to publish in the fall of 2019. The deal was organized by Samantha Haywood for the Transatlantic Agency.

“Zoe Whittall is one of the finest writers of her generation, the rare writer who captures in her fiction both the finer details of our fragile human lives and the big, vibrant story arc that is irresistible to readers. Her characteristic ability to choose themes that resonate with contemporary readers gives her work freshness and immediacy.” —Iris Tupholme

“Zoe Whittall is a writer of immense talent, who keeps getting stronger with each book. Finding her a home with the dynamic team at HarperCollins, and a devoted editor and champion as skilled as Iris Tupholme, is deeply satisfying.” —Samantha Haywood

The Spectacular begins in the late 1990s. Ruth is 80 and secretly enjoying a hot affair with a widower neighbour in suburban Montreal when she finds out she is dying. She decides to throw herself a farewell party in the seaside village where she spent her childhood, on the Aegean, in Turkey. She hopes to take along Missy, her granddaughter, a cello player in a notorious art-rock orchestra experiencing a wave of commercial success. Missy doesn’t want to stop touring; she’s happy travelling with her best friends, and has a lover in almost every city. But she’s forced to leave the tour after an incident at the border involving a forgotten flap of cocaine. She reluctantly joins Ruth on her journey, even though they disagree in almost every way about what a woman should expect from life—something that keeps them from telling each other a secret that could bring them closer together. We follow Missy and Ruth during three crucial turning points in their lives, via several interlocking narratives, as they negotiate who they wish they could be in a world that doesn’t always give them that freedom.

“I’m thrilled to work with the incredible team at HarperCollins and join an esteemed list that includes so many of my Canadian literary heroes.” —Zoe Whittall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zoe Whittall is the author of The Best Ten Minutes of Your Life (2001), The Emily Valentine Poems (2006) and Precordial Thump (2008), and is the editor of Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws (2003). Her debut novel, Bottle Rocket Hearts (2007), placed among the Globe and Mail’s Best Books of the Year and CBC Canada Reads’ Top Ten Essential Novels of the Decade. Her second novel, Holding Still for As Long As Possible (2009), won a Lambda Literary Award and was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. Most recently, The Best Kind of People (2016), has taken the Canadian literary scene by storm, receiving countless accolades, and will be published in the UK (Hodder & Stoughton) and the US (Ballantine) in 2017. Whittall’s writing has appeared in The Walrus, The Believer, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, Fashion and more. She has also worked as a writer and story editor on the TV shows Degrassi: The Next Generation and Schitt’s Creek. Born in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, she has an MFA from the University of Guelph and lives in Toronto.

HarperCollins Publishers is the second-largest consumer book publisher in the world, with operations in 18 countries. With two hundred years of history and more than 65 unique imprints around the world, HarperCollins publishes approximately 10,000 new books every year, in over 30 languages, and has a print and digital catalogue of more than 200,000 titles. Writing across dozens of genres, HarperCollins authors include winners of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Newbery and Caldecott Medals and the Man Booker Prize, and in Canada the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award, among many others. HarperCollins, headquartered in New York, is a subsidiary of News Corp (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) and can be visited online at corporate.HC.com. In Canada, visit www.harpercollins.ca.