Upswell acquires Declan Fry’s “Fantasy Ransom”

Upswell Publishing has acquired world rights to Fantasy Ransom, the debut novel by Declan Fry, via Jenny Darling at Jenny Darling & Associates.

Set against a backdrop of political unrest and student demonstrations, Fantasy Ransom centres on a young university translator who is teaching a group of mainly Chinese students. “Attempting to make sense of his place in the city before his partner returns home, his life becomes increasingly entangled with the lives and histories of those he teaches and works with,” said the publisher. The novel explores “the outer limits of desire, loss, and questions of shared culpability and shame”.

Fry said, “I wanted to write about parts of Australia we see every day yet often choose to ignore. Working on Fantasy Ransom, I found myself peering into the unknown. Some days someone was in there, peering back. They still are.”

Of the acquisition, Fry added, “Upswell is a ferociously great publisher and I can’t say enough about how lucky I am to be working with Terri-ann and her team.”

Upswell publisher Terri-ann White said, “I’ve been following Declan’s manoeuvres across Australian literary fields for all of his active years to date and am delighted to be entrusted with his first novel, an assured work full of intrigue and a visceral precision rare in the manuscripts I receive. His vivid scenes have stayed with me.”

Fry has written for the Guardian, the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Monthly and the ABC. His fiction and poetry have appeared in The Uncollected Animals (Turtle Point Press, 2026), Woven (Magabala, 2024) and Another Australia (Affirm, 2022). He is a recipient of the Hilary McPhee Award and the Peter Blazey Fellowship and has won the Griffith Review short story prize.

Upswell plans to publish Fantasy Ransom in April 2027.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions