A&U acquires Hardy’s memoir and novel

Allen & Unwin (A&U) has acquired ANZ rights to Emma Hardy’s memoir Periodic Bitch and a planned novel, in a two-book deal brokered by Michaela McGuire at a4 Literary.

According to the publisher, Periodic Bitch is a “captivating literary exploration of menstrual monsters and the culture that made them”. Hardy unpacks her experience with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), questioning when a mood becomes an illness.

“Hardy interrogates crime scenes, feminist horrors and the history of women who have been institutionalised for hysterical illnesses,” said the publisher, “to offer a new understanding of our beliefs about illness.”

Based in Naarm/Melbourne, Hardy has published in Guernica, the Monthly, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Lifted Brow, Voiceworks and Going Down Swinging. She wrote Periodic Bitch while undertaking a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where her manuscript was highly awarded, said the publisher.

Hardy said, “It is a deeply personal book for me, but more importantly it’s the kind of literary nonfiction that I find expansive and exciting to work with as a writer. When it comes to illnesses like PMDD, we so often hear from institutions or medical professionals.

“Through this book, I wanted to give a specific voice to the lived experience of menstrual illness beyond the cold, clinical lens I often found myself confronted with while researching. I wanted to explore the dualities and uncertainties that are a part of living with an illness, and a part of being human.”

Publisher Alex Craig said, “Emma has crafted a mesmerising study of identity, illness and the intersection of cultural assumptions and the history of women’s experience of menstruation and medicalisation in this bold literary memoir. I knew from the first page I was in the company of an elegantly assured and exciting new voice in nonfiction and fiction.”

A&U plans to publish Periodic Bitch in Australia and New Zealand in May 2026.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions