NewSouth acquires Tiffany novella

NewSouth has acquired Australian publishing rights to The Lady with the Dog, a new novella by Carrie Tiffany, with illustrations by Noel McKenna, in a deal with Curtis Brown literary agent Alex Christie.

The Lady with the Dog is described as “a personal, poetic work” loosely based on Tiffany’s mother’s and stepfather’s final months. It centres on a woman living with Alzheimer’s, deeply attached to the dog she’s recently adopted with her devoted but unwell husband. “As the woman’s condition worsens, the dog becomes both companion and symbol, anchoring her to the world.”

The novella “transforms real events experienced by Tiffany’s parents during Western Australia’s extended Covid lockdown into a resonant imaginative narrative of memory, love and loss,” said the publisher.

Tiffany said, “My mother had always wanted a dog. […] And finally, in the last six months of their lives, my parents collected an old German Shepherd from the pound. This was during the long lockdown in Western Australia. My mother did not understand why I could not come to see her. I rang her multiple times a day. She was paranoid, despairing, furious, accusatory. It was only the dog she could speak of.”

The publisher said, “The Lady with the Dog confirms Carrie Tiffany as one of Australia’s most important and fearless literary voices, offering readers a work of rare emotional clarity and grace. McKenna’s tender, playful and quietly elegiac illustrations amplify the book’s themes of companionship, fragility and endurance.”

Tiffany was born in West Yorkshire and grew up in Western Australia. A former park ranger, she has 20 years’ experience as a researcher, writer, editor and teacher of creative writing. She is the author of three Miles Franklin Award shortlisted novels: Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, Mateship with Birds, and Exploded View. She has also published short stories and nonfiction in many journals, magazines and anthologies.

Tiffany was the inaugural winner of the Stella Prize, and has won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, the Queensland Prize for Fiction, the Western Australian Premier’s Prize for Fiction, the Victorian Premier’s Prize for an unpublished manuscript, the Melbourne Writers Prize and the Dobbie First Book Award.

The Lady with the Dog is scheduled by NewSouth for October 2026.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions