Kelly Link Brings YA Collection to Viking

By Joy Bean -- Publishers Weekly, 4/25/2007 2:22:00 PM

Kelly Link, a much-acclaimed short story writer who has published her first two books on her own, has signed with Sharyn November at Viking Children’s Books to do a young adult story collection. The book was sold by Renee Zuckerbrot at the Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency, and is scheduled for a fall 2008 release.

Link, in partnership with husband, Gavin Grant, run Small Beer Press in Northampton, Mass. Small Beer published Link’s first two collections for adults, Magic for Beginners (2005) and Stranger Things Happen (2001). PW praised Link’s “effervescent blend of quirky humor and pathos that transform stock themes of genre fiction into the stuff of delicate lyrical fantasy.”

Link seemed relieved to not be her own publisher for once. “It’s nice that it will be someone else’s job to publish this book. I love the fact that I get to publish books, but it’s weird to publish yourself.”

Link said the YA book seemed a natural since she’s been publishing stories in young adult anthologies from McSweeney’s, and others, for a few years. The YA collection will contain a mixture of stories that have been published in other collections and young adult anthologies, as well as a new story. She said they are a combination of fantasy, ghost stories and “some pretty funny” tales.

Two of the stories that will appear in the Viking collection have been optioned for the movies. Film rights to “The Wizards of Perfil” have been sold to an as-yet unnamed studio, and “The Faery Handbag”—in which an entire village lives in a vintage handbag—has been optioned by Corey Sienega of David Kirschner Productions.