Bakers Lane acquires Craig’s “Flying Hearts”
Bakers Lane Books has acquired world rights to YA verse novel Flying Hearts by Rico Craig.
Flying Hearts “celebrates teen friendship and love, as four teenagers – Telly, Karr, Ahmad and Jessica – explore the trains, parks and streets of the Inner West and western Sydney”, according to the publisher.
“In a world where the threat of toxic masculinity looms, the four gain trust as they struggle through the inequities of class, the uncertainty of familial connection, and their own search for meaning.”
Craig is a poet, writer, workshop facilitator and storyteller-in-chief at the Story Factory, where he designs and facilitates creative writing programs for students and professional development programs for teachers. His first poetry collection, Bone Ink (UWA Publishing), was the winner of the 2017 Anne Elder Award and shortlisted for the 2018 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize.
“Flying Hearts comes from the experience of working with teenagers for many years, listening to the way young people try to make meaning in the world they’ve been cast into,” said Craig. “I’ve always felt the fragmentary style of verse novels is the most immediate way to capture and share the moments of quick, almost magical revelation that teenagers experience as they discover the way they will exist in the world.
“I’ve carried these characters with me for a long time; I’ve imagined them near me on trains, sitting in classrooms, waiting out the front of shops. I found that story a few years ago when I started noticing a repeated piece of graffiti around the suburbs of Sydney, a single heart with three motion streaks; sometimes on walls, on bins, on traffic lights, in places you would never expect. The more I thought about the flying hearts, the more they seemed to appear. Then my characters started to gather around them, like this tiny sign was what they had been waiting for, the thing that could join them together in a story.”
Bakers Lane plans to publish Flying Hearts in June 2027.
Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions
