Delacorte to Release Collection of Unpublished Vonnegut Stories

By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 4/10/2009 7:38:00 AM

Kurt Vonnegut’s longtime publisher, Delacorte Press, has announced it will issue 14 never-before published short stories by the author, who died in 2007, in a new collection, Look at the Birdie, slated for publication in November 2009. Donald C. Farber, co-executor of Vonnegut’s estate, brokered the world rights deal. 

The publication of Look at the Birdie coincides with Delacorte’s reissuing of 15 Vonnegut backlist titles in packages featuring artwork Vonnegut created. Shortly before Look at the Birdie goes on sale, Delacorte will release new editions of The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Slaughterhouse Five and Galápagos, and the house will publish additional titles over the following months. Other original forthcoming titles will include a second collection of Vonnegut’s unpublished writings as well as a book of letters sent to and from the author over the course of his life. Delacorte has also acquired a follow-up memoir by Vonnegut’s son, pediatrician Mark Vonnegut, author of The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity (1975). 

Look at the Birdie will include original Vonnegut illustrations and a foreword by Sidney Offit, a longtime Vonnegut confidant and the current curator of the George Polk Awards in Journalism. Bantam Dell publisher and editor-in-chief Nita Taublib and editor Kerri Buckley put the collection together. Taublib said, “Considered independently, these are 14 exceptionally intricate short pieces by an author whose voice we miss immensely. Taken together, they give the reader a clear sense of Kurt Vonnegut’s development into one of the most beloved and original American writers of all time.”