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Peninsula Press will begin publishing book-length essayistic non-fiction, launching in the autumn with a collection by US academic and poet Emily Ogden.
The new titles will be longer than those in Peninsula’s Pocket Essay series, which includes books such as Exposure by Olivia Sudjic and Daddy Issues by Katherine Angel, although that series will continue alongside these full-length works.
The new series debuts in September with On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays, a suite of personal pieces by Ogden. British Commonwealth rights were acquired by co-director Will Rees directly from Lucina Schell at University of Chicago Press.
Rees said: "Emily is a rare thing: a talented stylist who is also an exceptional thinker. In On Not Knowing she makes a virtue of the paradox of trying to ’know’ what, by definition, must remain unknowable and her book offers both a persuasive argument for and a perfect example of the value of these rich and fugitive pleasures. We are delighted to be bringing this wonderful book to UK readers."
Ogden’s title will be followed by Living Rooms by debut author and academic Sam Johnson-Schlee, publishing in November 2022. World rights were acquired by Rees from Imogen Morrell at Greene & Heaton.
"Living Rooms is like if Walter Benjamin had written not about 19th-century Parisian arcades but the 21st-century suburban British home," Rees said. "Sam’s writing is moving and radical, almost absurdly expansive in its conceptual and emotional range. In the space of a few pages he can move between the colonial history of house plants, razor-sharp critique of contemporary rentier capitalism, and Proustian reminiscence of summers spent at his grandparents’ self-built bungalow. We couldn’t be happier to have found this talented new writer and to welcome him to Peninsula Press."
Covers for first two books have been designed by Tom Etherington, formerly of Penguin Press. The cover for On Not Knowing has been featured in Print magazine.
Further titles will follow in 2023 and beyond.