A&U acquires Wright fiction

Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ rights to Michelle Wright’s Good Boy, in a deal brokered by Alexandra Christie at Curtis Brown Australia.

The novel follows Cookie, an inmate in a minimum-security prison in rural Victoria, who is participating in a last-chance rehabilitation program for abandoned dogs, said the publisher. “When he realises the dog he is training, whom he’s named Good Boy, is going to fail the upcoming behavioural assessment and be euthanised, Cookie decides to go on the run in a bid to save him.”

Wright is the author of the award-winning short story collection Fine, and the novel Small Acts of Defiance. Good Boy is her second novel.

She said, “My lifelong interest in criminal justice and incarceration dates back to my experience as an eighteen-year-old, acting in a prisoners’ theatre group in Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison. In telling the story of Cookie and Good Boy, I wanted to explore complex notions such as remorse, retribution and redemption through the bond between two unlikely companions, their growing understanding of each other and the healing power of hope.”

A&U publisher Alex Craig said, “Michelle has done a stunning job here – a light hand, at times tremendously funny, for serious themes about punishment and redemption that invite the reader into Cookie’s world. It’s impossible not to be deeply affected by his life story, his vigilance in search of safety in an unstable and violent world and his loneliness, pierced by Good Boy’s arrival. It’s a beautiful novel.”

A&U plans to publish Good Boy in Australia and New Zealand in April 2026.

Category: Local news