PRESS RELEASE
Hashtag Press signs For Books' Sake Founder for Summer 2022 YA Release
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, 22ndNovember 2021:Hashtag Press (www.hashtagpress.co.uk) has signed a new YA fiction set in Ibiza and Manchester by Jane Claire Bradley.The Summer Everything Happenedwill be released in June 2022 in time for ‘beach reads' and summer marketing opportunities.
This "stellar summer read" was acquired by Helen Lewis and Abiola Bello at Hashtag Press from Silvia Molteni, the head of the children's and YA books department at Peters Fraser + Dunlop.
Helen Lewis, co-director at Hashtag Press, says: "As a small, indie, female-led publishing house, focused on diverse and inclusive books, Jane's book really stood out in a sea of submissions! We've had a surprising number of novels with a theme of ‘when summer went wrong', but Jane's manuscript truly grabbed our attention."
Abiola Bello, co-director at Hashtag Press, says: "Over the past five years, we've developed a solid reputation for stand-out books by strong writers with beautiful covers such as Being Amani by Annabelle Steele... Recently, Ten Steps to Us by Attiya Khan (published under our Hashtag BLAK imprint) reached number three in the Amazon charts after just a few weeks on sale. And we've just released I Am Winter by Denise Brown, already getting incredible reviews. We love our YA books so we're always looking for our next YA author to champion and promote, and we truly believe we have found what we've been looking for in Jane Claire Bradley."
Meet Cookie: so nicknamed because she's smart and tough (and because her mum doesn't like her using her real name). She and her delinquent best friend Ash have just finished their GCSEs, and they're determined to make it a summer to remember. But after blagging their way from their Salford tower block to the bohemian bars and beaches of Ibiza, they find things in the hedonistic ravers' paradise aren't entirely what they seem. Between dangerous holiday romances and unravelling family secrets, there's trouble on the island and at home, resulting in a race against time to answer the question: can you ever really escape who you are and where you're from?
This powerful, fast-paced and transporting debut novel explores trauma, class, queerness and coming of age, from one of the boldest new voices in Northern writing. Winner of the Northern Debut Award from New Writing North.
Signed copies of The Summer Everything Happened by Jane Claire Bradley are available to pre-order viawww.hashtagpress.co.uk/shop.
Media enquiries:info@literallypr.com
Abiola Bello and Helen Lewis (Co-Founders of Hashtag Press) and Jane Claire Bradley are available for media interview and comment upon request. Press copies of other Hashtag Press YA novels are available too - please get in touch for more info!
@hashtag_press
About Jane Claire Bradley
Jane Claire Bradley (www.janeclairebradley.com) is a writer, performer, educator and therapist based in Manchester. Jane writes novels, short stories and performance poetry, mostly about teenagers, trauma, queerness and class. Her first novel won the Northern Debut Award from New Writing North and she has been longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition and the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. In non-pandemic times, she hosted the award-winning spoken word night That's What She Said, selling out shows from Edinburgh Fringe to the Royal Albert Hall. Jane is the founder of For Books' Sake (www.forbookssake.net), the non-profit dedicated to championing marginalised writers, and has her own therapy practice, Rebel Therapy (www.rebel-therapy.com).
@janeclairebradley