I’ve been keeping a big secret since July… and I am thrilled to finally tell you my good news: I sold my debut novel The Reunion to Dutton Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House!
Sex and culture critic Ella Dawson’s THE REUNION, about a burned-out bisexual young woman who attends her five-year college reunion only to encounter her estranged chosen family, old demons, and the ex she maybe shouldn’t have walked away from, to Maya Ziv at Dutton, in a pre-empt, by Jamie Carr at The Book Group (NA).
The Reunion tackles big themes you will recognize from my non-fiction work: mental health and burnout, abuse recovery, queer chosen family, and desire. The joke title for this book is Cranky Millennial Romance, as it’s about two twenty-something alumni bonding over their unimpressive lives at their college reunion. My heroine Charlotte Thorne is an anxious queer artist, an abuse survivor, and a beer pong champion. I wanted to write a grounded, contemporary second-chance romance that reflects the unglamorous challenges and hopeful love stories of my friends. I think — I hope! — you will love it.
I am enormously grateful to my Patreon community for supporting me financially and emotionally as I worked on this book. Ever since I wrote the first draft in fall 2019, The Reunion has undergone many revisions, and it will have at least one more under the supervision of Dutton’s Maya Ziv and my rockstar agent Jamie Carr. Writing a novel is an exhausting process riddled with self-doubt, impostor syndrome and sheer panic. The faith my readers have in my voice kept me going on nights when I felt like I didn’t know how to write a sentence anymore.
Thank you for coming on this journey with me. I cannot wait to share Charlotte and Reece’s story with you.
Ella Dawson 