Jo Unwin Literary Agency

Submissions

Have a book you want us to read? It’s difficult to say what we’re looking for until we see it, but it needs to be as good as you can possibly make it if we are to offer representation. If you can make us laugh or cry or – even better – both, then you’re definitely on the right track. We only represent poetry or picture books in exceptional circumstances, or when they’re by our existing authors, and science fiction is better represented by specialists in the field.

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News

Happy publication day to Jacqueline Roy and Gianna Pollero!

The Gosling Girl by Jacqueline Roy and Monster Doughnuts: Cyclops on a Mission by Gianna Polero are both released today!

About THE GOSLING GIRL:

Monster? Murderer?

Child? Victim?

Michelle Cameron’s name is associated with the most abhorrent of crimes. A child who lured a younger child away from her parents and to her death, she is known as the black girl who murdered a little white girl; evil incarnate according to the media. As the book opens, she has done her time, and has been released as a young woman with a new identity to start her life again.

When another shocking death occurs, Michelle is the first in the frame. Brought into the police station to answer questions around a suspicious death, it is only a matter of time until the press find out who she is now and where she lives and set about destroying her all over again. Natalie Tyler is the officer brought in to investigate the murder. A black detective constable, she has been ostracised from her family and often feels she is in the wrong job. But when she meets Michelle, she feels a complicated need to protect her, whatever she might have done.

The Gosling Girl is a moving, powerful account of systemic, institutional and internalised racism, and of how the marginalised fight back. It delves into the psychological after-effects of a crime committed in childhood, exploring intersections between race and class as Michelle’s story is co-opted and controlled by those around her. Jacqueline writes with a cool restraint and The Gosling Girl is a raw and powerful novel that will stay with the reader long after they have turned the last page.

About MONSTER DOUGHNUTS: CYCLOPS ON A MISSION:

This is the sequel to Monster Doughnuts. Tenth-generation monster-hunter Grace has a unique way of bumping off monsters. She and her sister run a bakery, Cake Hunters, where they make fabulous creations full of a special exploding baking powder that will get rid of any troublesome monster!

And now Grace has a new and unlikely partner in crime – 360-year-old cyclops Mr Harris. They have a new and perilous mission from the Secret Service – to rid the city of a pesky Bottom-Biter who is causing havoc. If only Mr Harris would stop just eating the monsters and honing his advanced patisserie skills in Grace’s bakery, what a team they’ll make!

Perfect for ages 7 -9 year olds.

Click here to buy The Gosling Girl, and here for more about the author Jacqueline Roy

Click here to buy Monster Doughnuts: Cyclops on a Mission and here about the author Gianna Pollero

Happy publication day to Cathy Rentzenbrink! Write It All Down is out now!

**Why do we want to write and what stops us? How do we fight the worry that no-one will care what we have to say? What can we do to overcome the obstacles in our way?**

*Sunday Times* bestselling author Cathy Rentzenbrink shows you how to tackle all this and more in *Write It All Down*, a guide to putting your life on the page. Complete with a compendium of advice from amazing writers such as Dolly Alderton, Adam Kay and Candice Carty-Williams, this book is here to help you discover the pleasure and solace to be found in writing; the profound satisfaction of wrestling a story onto a page and seeing the events of your life transformed through the experience of writing a memoir.

Perfect for seasoned writers as well as writing amateurs and everyone in between, this helpful handbook will steer you through the philosophical and practical challenges of writing, whether you’re struggling with writers block or worrying what people will say. Intertwined with reflections and exercises, *Write It All Down* is at once an intimate conversation and an invitation to share your story.

Click to buy here!

Congratulations to Women’s Prize for Fiction Finalists: Eliza Clark and Candice Carty-Williams!

We are so excited to see that **Eliza Clark** with *Boy Parts* and **Candice Carty-Williams** with *Queenie* are finalists for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 Award with Good Housekeeping!

“To be considered, female authors had to be under 35, based in the UK and have published at least one novel. From the hundreds put forward by their publishers, the Futures judges have picked 10 finalists – and we’re asking Good Housekeeping readers to help us find an ultimate winner who we’ll be announcing in the December 2022 issue.

These ten writers, whether they’ve published one book or five, all show tremendous promise. The books they’ve written don’t just entertain, they also make us think and open our eyes to other ways of being”.

Click the link below for more information and to vote:

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/lifestyle/editors-choice-book-reviews/a38262257/womens-prize-futures/

Cover reveal for Kit de Waal’s memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes

Due out in August 2022, from the award-winning author of *My Name is Leon*, *The Trick to Time* and *Supporting Cast* comes a childhood memoir set to become a classic: stinging, warm-hearted, and true.

Kit de Waal grew up in a household of opposites and extremes. Her haphazard mother rarely cooked, forbade Christmas and birthdays, worked as a cleaner, nurse and childminder sometimes all at once and believed the world would end in 1975. Meanwhile, her father stuffed barrels full of goodies for his relatives in the Caribbean, cooked elaborate meals on a whim and splurged money they didn’t have on cars, suits and shoes fit for a prince. Both of her parents were waiting for paradise. It never came.

Caught between three worlds, Irish, Caribbean and British in 1960s Birmingham, Kit and her brothers and sisters knew all the words to the best songs, caught sticklebacks in jam jars and braved hunger and hellfire until they could all escape.

Without Warning and Only Sometimes is a story of an extraordinary childhood and how a girl who grew up in house where the Bible was the only book on offer went on to discover a love of reading that inspires her to this day.

Coming in April 2022: New books from Nina Stibbe and Candice Carty-Williams!

One Day I Shall Astonish the World by Nina Stibbe, the prize-winning author of Reasons to be Cheerful comes a story about the ebb and flow of female friendship over half a lifetime

Susan and Norma have been best friends for years, at first thrust together by force of circumstance (a job at The Pin Cushion, a haberdashery shop in 1990s Leicestershire) and then by force of character (neither being particularly inclined to make friends with anyone else). But now, thirty years later, faced with a husband seeking immortality and Norma out of reach on a wave of professional glory, Susan begins to wonder whether she has made the right choices about life, love, work, and, most importantly, friendship.

Nina Stibbe’s new novel is the story of the wonderful and sometimes surprising path of friendship: from its conspiratorial beginnings, along its irritating wrong turns, to its final gratifying destination.

People Person by Candice Carty-Williams, is the follow up to her Sunday Times best selling Queenie. Here comes a propulsive story of heart, humour, homecoming, and about the truest meaning of family you can get when your dad loves his jeep more than he loves his children:

IF YOU COULD CHOOSE YOUR FAMILY…

YOU WOULDN’T CHOOSE THE PENNINGTONS.

Dimple Pennington knew of her half siblings, but she didn’t really know them. Five people who don’t have anything in common except for faint memories of being driven through Brixton in their dad’s gold jeep, and some pretty complex abandonment issues. Dimple has bigger things to think about. She’s thirty, and her life isn’t really going anywhere. An aspiring lifestyle influencer with a terrible and wayward boyfriend, Dimple’s life has shrunk to the size of a phone screen. And despite a small but loyal following, she’s never felt more alone in her life. That is, until a dramatic event brings her half siblings Nikisha, Danny, Lizzie and Prynce crashing back into her life. And when they’re all forced to reconnect with Cyril Pennington, the absent father they never really knew, things get even more complicated.

Black British Lives Matter, by Marcus Ryder and Lenny Henry, featuring an essay by Kit de Waal, out today!

**“Our identity and experience will shape every story, bleed into every poem, inform every essay whether it’s about Black ‘issues’ or not”**
– Kit de Waal

In response to the international outcry at George Floyd’s death, Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder have commissioned this collection of essays to discuss how and why we need to fight for Black lives to matter – not just for Black people but for society as a whole.

Recognising Black British experience within the Black Lives Matter movement, nineteen prominent Black figures explain why Black lives should be celebrated when too often they are undervalued. Drawing from personal experience, they stress how Black British people have unique perspectives and experiences that enrich British society and the world; how Black lives are far more interesting and important than the forces that try to limit it.

“We achieve everything not because we are superhuman. We achieve the things we achieve because we are human. Our strength does not come from not having any weaknesses, our strength comes from overcoming them” Doreen Lawrence.

“I always presumed racism would always be here, that it was a given. But the truth is, it was not always here, it was invented.” David Olusoga

Featuring essays from David Olusoga, Dawn Butler MP, Kit de Waal, Kwame Kwei-Armah, and many more.

Christmas is coming..! Happy publication day to Jenny Colgan!

The brand new feel-good Christmas novel from Sunday Times top ten bestselling author, Jenny Colgan “The Christmas Bookshop” is out now! ❄️🎄📚💙

Carmen has always worked in her local department store. So, when the gorgeous old building closes its doors for good, she is more than a little lost.

When her sister, Sofia, mentions an opportunity in Edinburgh – a cute little bookshop, the spare room in her house – Carmen is reluctant, she was never very good at accepting help. But, short on options, she soon finds herself pulling into the snowy city just a month before Christmas.

What Sofia didn’t say is that the shop is on its last legs and that if Carmen can’t help turn things around before Christmas, the owner will be forced to sell. Privately, Sofia is sure it will take more than a miracle to save the store, but maybe this Christmas, Carmen might surprise them all…

“A cracker! A must-read this festive season!” – The Sun

“Naturally funny and warm hearted” – Lisa Jewell

“An evocative sweet treat” – Jojo Moyes

“Irresistible” – Jill Mansell

“Just lovely” – Katie Fforde

“Gorgeous, glorious, uplifting” – Marian Keyes

Keisha the Sket. Out now!

Where were you when Keisha the Sket first broke the internet?

Keisha is a girl from the ends, sharp, feisty, and ambitious; she’s been labelled ‘top sket’ but she’s making it work. When childhood crush and long-time admirer, Ricardo, finally wins her over, Keisha has it all: power, a love life, and the chance for stability. But trauma comes knocking and with it a whirlwind of choices that will define what kind of a woman she truly wants to be.

Told with the heart and soul of the inner city, with an unforgettable heroine, Keisha the Sket is a revelation of the true, raw, arousing, and tender core of British youth culture.

In print for the first time, Keisha the Sket has lived in the phones and websites of fans for decades. This timeless coming-of-age story is not just a word-of-mouth sensation but also a British classic in the making.

Complete with essays from esteemed contemporary writers Candice Carty-Williams, Caleb Femi, Aniefiok Ekpoudom and Enny, this is the complete and definitive edition with additional content from the author, perfect for readers – existing and new – to read and fall in love with over and over again.

‘Keisha the Sket is truly a crucial part of not just Black Brit literature, but British literature as a whole.’– Bolu Babalola, bestselling author of Love In Colour

‘Our literary foremother.’ – Candice Carty-Williams, best-selling author of Queenie

‘Keisha the Sket accidentally decolonised literature.’ – Black Ballad

‘Reading Keisha the Sket as an adult makes me swoon at the richness of its nostalgia.’ – Caleb Femi

‘British answer to ‘Gossip Girl’.’ – Dazed

‘Keisha the Sket has united a nation and rebirthed a generation of readers who were gripped by the tale of a ‘top sket’’ – The Face

Happy publication day to Candice Carty-Williams with her first YA novel: EMPRESS & ANIYA!

The first YA novel from the bestselling author of Queenie! When Empress starts at Aniya’s school, they’re not exactly best friends. But, when the two teenage girls accidentally cast a spell on their 16th birthday and end up switching bodies, they quickly learn that friendship is the most important magic of all. South London’s answer to ‘Freaky Friday’, Empress and Aniya is a moving portrayal of the importance of real friendship and the ups and downs of being a teenager.

“Honest, funny and heartbreaking, and uplifting all at once!” – Tanya Byrne.

“A genuine joy to read” – Bethany Rutter

“Candice has once again created characters that have been written with such sweet warmth and bitter truth that you cannot help but embrace them through the pages” – Clara Amfo

Empress & Aniya dazzles in three colours: pink, independent bookshop exclusive in orange, and the signed blue edition exclusive to Waterstones.

About JULA Ltd

Kit De Waal

Louise Lee

Nina Stibbe

Karen Campbell

Charlie Brooker

Maudie Smith