We are elated to announce that World rights to Martha Baillie’s THERE IS NO BLUE have been acquired by Alana Wilcox at Coach House Books in a deal arranged by Samantha Haywood, and sold to Sigrid Rausing at Granta, by Alana Wilcox for publication October 3rd 2023!
THERE IS NO BLUE, is Martha Baillie’s richly layered response to her mother’s passing, her father’s life, and her sister’s suicide, a memoir exploring how the body, the rooms we inhabit, and our languages offer the psyche a home, if only for a time.
Three essays, three deaths. The first is the death of the author’s mother, a protracted disappearance, leaving space for thoughtfulness and ritual: the washing of her body, the making of a death mask. The second considers Baillie’s father, his remoteness, his charm, a lacuna at the center of the family even before his death, earlier than her mother’s. And then, third, shockingly, the author’s sister, a visual artist and writer living with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, who writes three reasons to die on her bedroom wall and then takes her life, just before the book the sisters co-authored is due to come out.
Martha Baillie was born in Toronto, and educated in a French-English bilingual school. She studied history and modern languages (French and Russian) at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Toronto. While at university, she became involved in theater.
Baillie’s first novel, MY SISTER ESTHER, was published in 1995, followed by MADAME BALASHOVSKAYA’S APARTMENT in 1999. The latter was translated into Hungarian and German. In 2006, her third novel, THE SHAPE I GAVE YOU received excellent reviews nationwide. Her 2009 novel, THE INCIDENT REPORT was nominated for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize and is being made into a film to be released in 2023. THE SEARCH FOR HEINRICH SCHLÖGEL came out in September 2014 with Pedlar Press in Canada and Tin House in the US, and her lastest novel IF CLARA was published in 2017 with Coach House. SISTER LANGUAGE, co-written with Baillie’s late sister, was nominated for the 2020 Trillium Book Awards. Both IF CLARA and THE SEARCH FOR HEINRICH SCHLÖGEL were published by Actes Sud, (France) in 2017 and 2018.
Baillie lives in Toronto with family.
Deal arranged by Samantha Haywood.
Congratulations Martha!