Atlantic Books to publish ‘Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead’

Atlantic Books is to publish Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead, the debut novel by Canadian author Emily Austin. 

Responding to a flyer for free therapy, Gilda – a young woman struggling with acute anxiety – finds herself on the steps of St. Rigobert’s Catholic church. Too embarrassed to contradict Father Jeff, who assumes she’s there for a job interview, Gilda is hired to replace the elderly, recently deceased receptionist Grace. She’s not exactly qualified to be their new receptionist – she’s queer and an atheist for starters – and so in between trying to learn the lines to mass, hiding her new maybe-girlfriend Eleanor and worrying about the escalating investigation into Grace’s death, Gilda begins to confront the extent of her own mortifying existence.

Like a working-class Frances Ha, this angsty, mordant, gorgeously relatable lead title for summer 2021 will appeal to readers of Exciting Times and The New Me.

Editor Poppy Mostyn-Owen said:

‘I love this book. It’s warm, complex, and humane and captured all of us with its candour and relatability. Emily Austin has written both a deft actualisation of what anxiety can feel like and a brilliantly funny misadventure.’

Emily Austin said:

‘I am wholeheartedly delighted that my panicked story has found such a good home with Poppy and her team. I am thrilled to be working with Atlantic Books and to be sharing this book across the pond.’

Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin will be published in hardback and eBook in July 2021.