Atlantic acquires Bryan Washington’s new novel Family Meal

Atlantic Fiction Publishing Director James Roxburgh has acquired UK & Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, in Bryan Washington’s new novel from Danielle Bukowski at Sterling Lord Literistic. Family Meal will be published in hardback and trade paperback in October 2023, followed by a paperback in 2024.

From the bestselling, Dylan Thomas Prize-winning author of Memorial and Lot, a novel about two young men who grew up together, fell away from each other, and then collide again after a crisis…

Growing up, TJ was Cam’s boy next door. When Cam needed a home, TJ’s parents took him in. Their family bakery became Cam’s safe place… until he left. Years later, Cam’s world is falling apart. The love of his life is dead and Cam’s not sure he’s ready to let go of him, but when he has a chance to return to his home town he takes it. Back in the same place as TJ, they circle each other warily, TJ unsure how to navigate Cam – utterly cool, completely devastated and self-destructive – crashing back into his world.

Bryan Washington is a writer from Houston. His fiction and essays have appeared in, among other publications, The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, the BBC, Vulture and the Paris Review. He’s also a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 winner, the recipient of an Ernest J. Gaines Award, a PEN/Robert W. Bingham prize finalist, a National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize finalist, the recipient of an O. Henry Award and the winner of the 2020 International Dylan Thomas Prize.

James Roxburgh, Publisher for Atlantic Fiction, says,

‘This is such a beautiful novel – tough, honest, funny, sensual, traumatic, generous. It has a basic emotional philosophy of mutual accountability, that taking care of ourselves is taking care of the people we love, and taking care of the people we love is taking care of ourselves. It’s also brilliant on male friendship, on platonic love, on food and sex and on ghosts, and there’s a moment of stillness towards the end that moved me so much that my bones felt soft, and moved one of our publicity directors so much that a woman on the train had to ask if she was okay. Bryan Washington is a major writer, and this is very much a major work.’