Scribe acquires new books by Elson, Carroll

1 June 2018 Books+Publishing

Scribe has acquired rights to a number of new titles, including a biography of post-punk musician Rowland S Howard by Melbourne-based bookseller and writer Gerard Elson.

Titled Something Flammable: Approaching the Ghost of Rowland S Howard, the biography will examine the life and career of the influential post-punk Australian musician, who was the guitarist for the band The Birthday Party.

World rights were acquired by Scribe senior commissioning editor Marika Webb-Pullman, who said: ‘Rowland S Howard has attained cult status both here and internationally since his death, and I can’t imagine a person better placed to write about him than Gerard. He’s intimately acquainted with Howard’s work, and is approaching it with the enthusiasm of a fan and the rigour of a critic. This book will be a significant addition to Australian cultural history.’

Elson, who is a bookseller at Readings St Kilda, described Something Flammable as ‘the first book-length illumination of this singular musician’. ‘Making no claims to being definitive, it will draw upon original research and interviews with Howard’s dear ones, collaborators, and contemporaries to sketch a vivid picture of a life and an era, approaching Howard as a stone dropped in a greater cultural pool. In tone and form it will be elegant and idiosyncratic, like the remarkable artist at its core,’ he said.

Something Flammable will be published in late 2019, to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of Howard’s death.

Scribe has also acquired illustrated gift book (Definitely) The Best Dogs of All Time, written by Scribe publicist Jadan Carroll and illustrated by debut Berlin-based Australian artist Molly Dyson.

The book is described by the publisher as a collection of ‘heart-warming, absurd, and informative stories of the most exceptional hounds to have bounded across the earth’, from ‘Cerberus, the multi-headed hound of Hades, to Hachikō, Rin Tin Tin, and Duke—the thrice-elected [canine] mayor of Cormorant, Minnesota’.

Scribe will publish the title in the UK and Australia in November 2018.

The announcement of Carroll and Dyson’s illustrated gift book follows two other recent acquisitions of illustrated titles by Scribe, including UK and Commonwealth rights to A Girl’s Guide to Personal Hygiene, a collection of true stories of women’s bodies by the UK artist Tallulah Pomeroy, which will be published in November 2018 in Australia and the UK.

Scribe has also acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Notes from a Public Typewriter (Michael Gustafson, designed by Oliver Uberti), which compiles notes and essays from the public typewriter in Gustafson’s Ann Arbor bookshop, Literati Bookstore. Acquired by Scribe publisher Henry Rosenbloom, the book is slated for a June 2019 release.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions