Atlantic pre-empts debut book by winner of Working-Class Writers’ Prize Jon Doyle

James Roxburgh, Fiction Publisher at Atlantic Books, has pre-empted UK and Commonwealth (excluding Canada) rights to Jon Doyle’s debut, Communion, from Emma Paterson at Aitken Alexander. Communion will be published in hardback and export trade paperback on 2^nd April 2026.

Jon Doyle is a writer based in Port Talbot, South Wales. He was part of Literature Wales’ Representing Wales scheme in 2022/23, and won the Writers & Artists Working-Class Writers’ Prize 2023. He holds a BSc and MRes in Zoology and MA in Creative Writing from Cardiff University, and a PhD in Creative Writing from Swansea University. His work has appeared in Short Fiction, Hobart, Ploughshares Online, The Rumpus, 3:AM Magazine, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction among other places.

Communion is about Mack, a young guy who’s just left the seminary and gone home to Port Talbot, unordained and at war with his faith. He takes a job as a security guard at the local steelworks and begins an uneasy transition into the world of industry and community he once rejected. The last person Mack expects to see in the local club is Siwan Roderick – the woman who appeared out of the blue at the seminary one day to make a confession and swear him to secrecy. Mack kept his word, but his loyalty to Siwan and his clarifying sense of his role in the world will change both of their lives forever.

James Roxburgh says,

‘I straight-up love this: it’s a taut, lean literary thriller of deception and, ultimately, an act of violence; it’s a novel of stunning beauty, in which the description of the steelworks is given the same devotional care as that of the church; it’s about language, masculinity and class; about the quiet rhythms of two guarded people almost able to show each other the undefended parts of their soul but not quite, not yet. And, finally, it’s the bravest of things: it’s a novel about faith, about belief and the numinous, the kind of profound political and theological questioning that made my lapsed-protestant soul soar. I know publishers say this kind of thing all the time, but I genuinely and fully believe this is the first book of a significant literary career.’

 

Endorsements include:

‘Gritty and luminous… An immaculate debut’ Colin Walsh
‘A book of rare grace and presence’ Megan Hunter
‘A rare novel… Poignant and resounding’ Cynan Jones
‘Each paragraph arrives like short, beautiful breath’ Andrew McMillan
‘Electric… Wonderful, brilliant’ Kasim Ali