Meet the 2018 Picador New Voices

The Paris of Alicia Drake’s debut novel belongs to thirteen-year-old Paul. Lonely in the glamorous and perfect sixth arrondissement, he quietly observes the lives of the self-involved grown-ups around him. After living and working as a fashion journalist in Paris for almost two decades, Alicia Drake wrote I Love You Too Much in both English and French in order to capture the authentic world of Parisian perfection and superficiality.

I Love You Too Much, a novel about what lies behind the veneer of Parisian perfection.

The highly anticipated first novel by prize-winning American writer Jamie Quatro is a book about faith and commitment, a tender and unflinching story of marriage and infidelity, desire and obsession. Quatro’s debut short story collection, I Want To Show You More, was published to widespread acclaim in 2014, and was picked as a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice.

Part existential road trip, part neo-gothic thriller, part morality tale, The Killing of Butterfly Joe by Somerset Maugham Award winning author Rhidian Brook is an epic story of friendship, desire, and participating in the Great American Dream, whatever the consequences. Rhidian himself spent two years of his early-twenties travelling around the US and working as a salesman of butterflies in glass cases, which served as the inspiration for his latest novel. 

The irresistibly funny and enormously moving debut novel by AJ Pearce was inspired by her own collection of original letters, magazines and literature from the second world war. A thoroughly charming story of the power of female friendship, Blitz spirit, the kindness of strangers and the art of letter-writing itself, Dear Mrs Bird is a novel that won’t fail to make you smile in 2018.

Sharlene Teo’s debut novel won the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers Award in 2016 and Ian McEwan, who awarded the prize, called it ‘remarkable’. Set in Singapore, Ponti is the story of three women: sixteen-year-old Szu; her mother Amisa, a once beautiful actress; and Circe, Szu’s unlikely friend and confidant. Spanning five decades of their interconnected lives, Ponti is about a book about friendship, memory, and how we change. If you’re a fan of Zadie Smith’s rich, atmospheric storytelling, Sharlene Teo is a debut author to watch out for in 2018.

After being forced to accept that farming on the heavy clay of their land at Knepp in West Sussex was economically unsustainable, Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell made a spectacular leap of faith: they decided to let nature take over. What happened next, they could never have predicted.

Wilding is the remarkable story of how nature returned to Knepp.

Daniel Trilling is the editor of New Humanist magazine and has reported extensively on refugees at Europe’s borders. His work has been published by the Guardian, Al Jazeera, the London Review of Books, Newsweek, New Statesman and others, and was shortlisted for a 2014 Amnesty media award. In his new book, Lights in the Distance, Daniel draws on years of reporting to build a portrait of the refugee crisis through the eyes of those living through it. By taking the reader from Calais to Sicily, the Evros and the Ukraine through the accounts of the people he meets, Trilling presents an illuminating exploration of the nature and human dimensions of the refugee crisis.

A runner-up for the inaugural Deborah Rogers Foundations Writers Award in 2016, The Crossway is Guy Stagg’s deeply moving account of his ten-month walk from Canterbury to Jerusalem. Following the medieval pilgrimage routes through Western Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East and relying on the kindness of strangers throughout his journey, The Crossway is a breathtaking account of Guy’s physical journey, but also of his experience of recovering from mental illness.

In 2014 London-based journalist Jean Hannah Edelstein moved back to her native United States after over a decade of living abroad, when she discovered that her father was dying. Six weeks later he passed away, and six months later, she discovered she carried the gene which caused the cancer that killed him. This Really Isn't About You is a book about finding your way in life. Which is to say, it’s a book about discovering you are not really in charge of that at all. Written with the wit and honesty that Edelstein has become known for in her writing for The Pool, The Guardian and more, this book is an honest memoir of grief, illness and finding your way in life.