Scribe acquires Woollett nonfiction debut
Scribe has acquired world rights to Hell Days, Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s nonfiction debut.
Blending memoir, true crime, medical research, interviews, and cultural analysis, Hell Days investigates premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), a hormonal mood disorder with which the author was diagnosed in 2019, said the publisher. “Refracting outward from Woollett’s experiences as starving artist, coma patient, parent – to those of other PMDD sufferers, along with dedicated researchers and clinicians, Hell Days is a testament to the precarity and dignity of life as a periodically suicidal person of reproductive age at this moment in history.”
Woollett is the author of a short story collection, The Love of a Bad Man (Scribe, 2016), and three novels, Beautiful Revolutionary (Scribe, 2018), The Newcomer (Scribe, 2021) and West Girls (Scribe 2023). Her work has been long- and shortlisted for, among others, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and the Stella Prize. Laura was the City of Melbourne’s 2020 Boyd Garret writer-in-residence and a 2020-22 Marten Bequest scholar for prose.
She said, “This book was shaped by the disruption of pregnancy and early motherhood, by the escalating brutality of life in the 2020s, and by the pain, wisdom, and generosity of my interview subjects. While still a book about PMDD, Hell Days is also an unravelling of gender, the women’s health industry, and the ersatz empowerments of our post-Covid, post-#MeToo hellscape.”
Scribe publisher Marika Webb-Pullman said, “Known for her acclaimed fiction, Laura Elizabeth Woollett now turns her unflinching gaze inward and outward in a genre-bending account of what it means to navigate mental health, motherhood, and survival in contemporary life. Hell Days is essential reading – urgent, compassionate, and utterly necessary.”
Scribe plans to publish Hell Days in September 2026.
Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions
