Vanessa Manko (left), Susan Minot (center), and Salman Rushdie (right)
Vanessa Manko and Judy Chicurel, two authors featured in a recent issue of Granta, have signed book deals with Penguin. To toast these two authors, the literary magazine threw a party.
The celebration took place at Granta editor John Freeman‘s Manhattan loft on Wednesday night, and brought together a community of writers and editors including: Salman Rushdie, Sean McDonald, Alex Gilvarry, Mohsin Hamid, Nadeem Aslam, and Peter Carey, to name a few.
Manko, whose novel was excerpted in Granta 118: Exit Strategies, sold her novel The Un-American to Penguin through her agent Caroline Michel. The title is slated for publication in spring 2014. Manko, who works as Rushdie’s assistant, spent seven years working on the book. In a toast to the author, Rushdie quipped that she’s going to need to speed things up in the future. Over drinks, Manko explained that her background in dance helped inform her writing as she looked for the cadence in her language.
Chicurel sold her novel If I Knew Your Were Going To Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go to Amy Einhorn Books, a Penguin imprint, through her agent Sarah Burnes.
The shindig may be one of the last for the publication in New York. Freeman is leaving his post in July and Granta is shutting down its New York office.