Affirm acquires Keegan’s second novel

Affirm Press has acquired world rights to Lauren Keegan’s second novel, The Woman in the Seal Skin.

Set on a Scottish island, the novel follows Malie, who grew up hearing tales of shape-shifting selkies – creatures who shed their seal-skins to seduce men – and believes this to be how her own parents met. The life mapped out for her includes marriage and children, but “just like the seals in the sea, there’s a wildness in Malie’s soul,” said the publisher, “one that cannot be tamed and deeply yearns for the sea.”

An author and psychologist, Keegan has worked in perinatal and infant mental health. Her debut novel, All the Bees in the Hollows (Affirm, 2024), was voted Best Debut Fiction in the 2025 Indie Book Awards and was longlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize in 2025.

Keegan said, “I wrote The Woman in the Seal Skin just as I came up for air after those early years of parenting. In the writing process, I came to accept there will always be this tension between responsibilities and longing (writing!), and if I make time for both, I will stay true to myself.”

Affirm Press commercial publisher Kelly Doust said, “The Woman in the Seal Skin is a spellbinding exploration of the wildness that lives within women […] Lauren has crafted a novel that will resonate with fans of Hannah Kent, Kate Forsyth, and Holly Ringland’s The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding.”

Affirm plans to publish The Woman in the Seal Skin in April 2026.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions