Granta signs Sara Baume’s ‘extraordinary' memoir about the power of art
Granta has acquired Opening Night by Sarah Baume, the award-winning author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither and A Line Made by Walking.
Associate publishing director Jason Arthur bought UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada to the “exquisitely illustrated memoir about the power of art” from Lucy Luck of Lucy Luck Associates. Publication is scheduled for July 2026.
The memoir “charts the contours of [Baume’s] growing friendship with an American artist in exile”.
The description reads: “Shortly after the imposed isolation of the pandemic, Sara Baume came across a painting at a pop-up exhibition in rural West Cork. It so intrigued her that she was inspired to make contact with the artist, Mollie Douthit, a North Dakotan exile who was living and working alone in a log cabin surrounded by rugged coastline.
“Sara and Mollie discovered they had much in common – a dysfunctional attitude towards companionship, a devotion to the daily rituals of their respective art practices, an affinity with nature. They started to meet every month for soup and punishing swims in the Atlantic. Sara fell under the spell of Mollie’s paintings, pictures that welded memory and reality, and gradually started to write about them, curious as to whether it might be possible to craft a book in the style of the paintings.
“But what she had not anticipated was that a settled period in her own life would coincide with a period of tumultuous change for Mollie, and soon she found herself grappling with more complex ideas. Exquisitely illustrated in full colour, Opening Night charts the contours of a friendship and explores ideas about community and nationality, about neurosis and mysticism, about love and pain and the power of art.”
Arthur said: “Sara Baume is, to my mind, one of the most impressive and original writers of her generation. Her new work is extraordinary and utterly unforgettable. Since publishing her first two novels, Spill Simmer Falter Wither and A Line Made by Walking, I’ve wanted to work with Sara again, so I’m delighted to have been gifted that honour with Opening Night. And I’m also very grateful to Mollie Douthit, who has allowed us to reproduce in the book, in full colour, her quietly powerful paintings.”
