Penguin Press Nabs Coveted Debut Novel

by Matthew Thornton -- Publishers Weekly, 6/23/2008 3:11:00 PM

After a heated—and swift—auction, Penguin Press publisher Ann Godoff won U.S. rights to a widely sought debut novel by Reif Larsen called The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet; Denise Shannon made the sale, and Godoff will edit. The story of a 12-year-old genius mapmaker from Montana is, said Godoff, “completely unique from page one” and “so good it resists publishing hyperbole.”

Shannon went out with the manuscript June 12 and took the author to meet with publishers throughout last week. Concurrently, Penguin Canada won Canadian rights in an auction conducted by Dean Cooke, and deals have been struck via preempt in Germany and Italy. Auctions are underway in the U.K. and the Netherlands.

Larsen, 28, went to Brown and currently teaches at Columbia, where he is finishing his MFA in fiction. He is also a filmmaker and has shot a number of documentaries in the U.S., U.K. and sub-Saharan Africa about inner-city students working in the arts.