Cat Person short story writer inundated with publishing offers
A UK publisher has scooped the Kristen Roupenian's debut novel
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Your support makes all the difference.Kristen Roupenian set the Internet alight last week after the New Yorker published her short story ‘Cat Person’ about a turbulent brief sexual relationship between two characters.
Since then, UK publisher Jonathan Cape has already scooped up the author’s debut novel, a collection of short stories titled You Know You Want This, for a ‘high five-figure sum’.
Roupenian has reportedly been inundated with offers from US publishers, eleven bidders have driven the price tag over the $1m (£748,000) mark.
Speaking to The Guardian, Michal Shavit at Jonathan Cape said: “I was submitted the collection on Tuesday. By Wednesday, I had bought the book. She’s the real deal.
“Cat Person captured the public imagination to become a phenomenon. You see that so rarely in literary fiction.”
According to Shavit, the collection of short stories are “treading boundaries”, each one being very different from the last: “They’re occupying a similar space in the imagination, but they’re not all about the relationships between men and women… I genuinely think she’s a brilliant writer.”
‘Cat Person’ was Roupenian’s first piece for the New Yorker and has quickly become the magazine’s most-read short story of the year.
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