Wilton Square Books snares Emily Woof’s ‘electrifying’ novel
Wilton Square Books has acquired Ecstatic by Emily Woof, an “electrifying near-future novel about environmental decline, collective resistance and the radical power of dance in a city on the brink”.
Publisher Will Atkinson acquired world English-language rights from Rachel Goldblatt at Curtis Brown, with publication scheduled for 27th August 2026 in hardback. Atkinson, the former head of Atlantic Books, set up Wilton Square Books in 2025 in order initially to “provide a safe and secure home” for authors previously published by Unbound.
Ecstatic’s blurb reads: “When a government curfew silences a city, one woman risks everything to make it dance again. In an all-too-recognisable London gripped by heat, unrest and arbitrary state control, Lois refuses to let the body be regulated. When the right to assemble is revoked and the city turns brittle with violence, she plans an illegal three-day ‘long dance’ inside a crumbling East End church. What begins as an act of liberation will ripple through the lives of five strangers, with consequences none of them can foresee.”
Atkinson said of the acquisition: “Everyone who has read this book has been enthralled by it. It is urgent, prescient and has a febrile awareness of what it means to live in these awkward times. It is a novel chock-full of ideas and emotions. I was at Faber at the start of Emily’s writing career, and it is lovely to be reunited with her, at my own company, Wilton Square, 16 years on.”
Woof is an author, playwright and performer from Newcastle upon Tyne. Her novels The Whole Wide Beauty (2010) and The Lightning Tree (2015) were published by Faber. Other projects include the plays Sex III (Royal Court), Going Going (Royal Festival Hall/Southbank Centre) and Blizzard (Soho Theatre/59E59 New York).
She wrote and directed Meeting Helen for FilmFour and the award-winning short Between the Wars, and has written several dramas for BBC Radio 4. As a screen actor, her credits include The Full Monty, Velvet Goldmine, Vera and Mothering Sunday. Now based in London, she will perform a new piece, Revolver (II), in November and December 2026 (Soho Theatre, Main House).
She said: “When I started writing, I wanted to write about the moving body. That led me to the lives of ordinary people who dance, and the different reasons why they do so in a culture that often marginalises it or turns it into spectacle. I found myself fascinated by urban shamanism and alternative belief systems. As I wrote, I couldn’t separate from the wider pressures, both around me and within me – the climate emergency, mental health crisis, global chaos, regressive forces at play. The book grew into a story across six very different lives in a time of political and social crisis as my characters are pushed to the brink during a long hot chaotic summer.”
