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Hurst scoops Seletzky’s début on father who witnessed Martin Luther King assassination
Hurst has acquired The Kneeling Man by début author Leta McCollough Seletzky, an account of her father’s life as a Black spy who witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Senior editor Lara Weisweiller-Wu snapped up UK and Commonwealth rights from Rachel Clements at Abner Stein on behalf of the 2 Seas Agency. It will publish in April 2023 in hardback as a simultaneous publication with Counterpoint Press in the US to mark the 55th anniversary of King’s death.
The synopsis reads: “Marrell ‘Mac’ McCollough was a Black man working secretly with the white power structure. To understand this, Leta began looking into her father’s life – his motivations, his career with the police and the CIA, and the truth behind accusations of his involvement in King’s murder. What would Leta uncover, and did she want to know? How might Mac’s story change her own feelings about her place in Trump’s America?”
Weisweiller-Wu said: “Leta is a first-class writer: tight in her focus, rich in her detail and wrenching in her humanity. There is nobody better to tell her father’s deeply, almost bitterly moving story, and to weave that fascinating life into a bigger tapestry, from civil rights to the present. This is not just one family’s history, but a tale of modern Black America, and the choices it takes to survive in the face of turmoil and prejudice.”
Seletzky, who is currently a National Endowment for the Arts 2022 Creative Writing Fellow, commented: “I’m so thrilled that Hurst is bringing The Kneeling Man to readers in the UK and beyond. While the story unfolds in the US, its themes are universal, and it’s an honour to reach an international audience through a publisher that champions fresh perspectives on the most urgent issues of our time.”
