We're very excited about a new novel and memoir by Mandy Sayer which are currently going out on submission

LOVE IN THE YEARS OF LUNACY is set in Sydney and Papua New Guinea during the second world war. It tells the tale of illicit love between a young Sydney girl and an African American soldier. Both are saxophonists and their passion for music brings this unlikely pair together. When he is posted to New Guinea by his commander, she implements an audacious plant to follow him. The novel contains wonderful writing on music, especially when set against the backdrop of the PNG highlands. Sayer has been working on LOVE IN THE YEARS OF LUNACY for many years yet it has the feel of being very much of the moment. We have a full manuscript.


Mandy Sayer won the Vogel Award at 26, with her first novel, MOOD INDIGO. Since then she has been named one of Australia’s Best Young Novelists by the Sydney Morning Herald and has published the novels BLIND LUCK, THE CROSS, and THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES, which won the 2008 Davitt Award for Young Adult Fiction, and the short story collection FIFTEEN KINDS OF DESIRE.

OTHELLO IN THE MIDWEST is Sayer's proposed third memoir. It tells the story of her literary apprenticeship and of her first marriage, to another writer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyaka. Sayer's skill as a memoirist is very fine and we have every confidence in her ability to write a third memoir to rival DREAMTIME ALICE and VELOCITY. We have the first two chapters (to be read before the outline please) and a detailed outline. We anticipate the she will deliver the full manuscript in a year's time.

Sayer’s first memoir, DREAMTIME ALICE, about the years she spent tap dancing on the streets with her jazz drummer father in New York and New Orleans, won the 2000 National Biography Award, Australian Audio Book of the Year Award, and New England Booksellers’ Award in the U.S. It was published to critical acclaim in the U.S. and U.K. and was translated into several European languages. Her second memoir, VELOCITY, a prequel about her childhood, won the 2006 South Australian Premier’s Award for Non-Fiction and the 2006 Age Book of the Year (Non-Fiction). Sayer has also edited the anthology (with Louis Nowra), IN THE GUTTER, LOOKING AT THE STARS, a collection of literature set in Sydney’s red-light district, Kings Cross, and THE PENGUIN BOOK OF THE AUSTRALIAN LONG STORY, forthcoming in 2009.

A feature film adaptation of her novel, THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES, is in development with producer Michele Bennett and Cherub Films, with Sayer attached as screenwriter, and will go into production in 2009.

Sayer is a columnist for Sydney magazine, The Wentworth Courier, and regularly writes articles and book reviews for major publications, including The Spectator, Australian Literary Review, The Age, The Australian, and the Sydney Morning Herald. Her work has also appeared in scores of literary journals and anthologies in Australia, the U.S., and U.K. She has a BA and MA from Indiana University, and a Doctorate from the University of Technology, Sydney, where she is Scholar in Writing for 2009 the academic year.


Sayer lives in Sydney with her husband, playwright and author Louis Nowra

LONDON TRIPTYCH now out on Submission

I am delighted to be getting a really high level of interest in Jonathan Kemp's debut novel which is now out on submission internationally. Contact jemima@raftpr.com if you'd like to see the manuscript

LONDON TRIPTYCH by Jonathan Kemp

Rent boys and models, aristocrats, artists and gangsters populate Jonathan Kemp’s debut novel LONDON TRIPTYCH. Three men, three lives and three eras – the late 19th Century, the mid 1950s and the end of the 1990s – sinuously entwine in a dark, startling and unsettling narrative of sex, exploitation and dependence set against London’s strangely constant gay underworld. Kemp’s prose is pin-point precise and brings the three panels of the triptych to life with its own inner light.


Jonathan Kemp is a playwright, writer, DJ and lecturer in creative writing and literature. He lives and works in London.