Stephanie Danler was working as a waitress in New York City when she encountered Penguin Random House senior vice president and editor-at-large Peter Gethers. While she was serving him, she told him she was writing a novel.
After this meeting, Melissa Flashman, Danler’s literary agent, sent the manuscript to Gethers and he immediately recommended it for acquisition to editor Claudia Herr. Danler signed a pre-emptive, six-figure, two-book deal.
The New York Times reports that the first book, entitled Sweetbitter, “is both a coming-of-age and coming-to-New York story, and a novel about the seductive pleasures of food and wine. The story unfolds inside the glamorous, cutthroat and sometimes seedy world of elite Manhattan restaurants.” The Alfred A. Knopf imprint has scheduled a release date for 2016.