The list of Pontas clients writing in English language is being enlarged. After having included Jason Eric Miller recently, we are glad to inform that three more authors have joined the agency at the beginning of this year: Pete Fromm, Yvette K. Willemse and Brandon Graham.
A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (USA), Pete Fromm attended the University of Montana, earning a degree in Wildlife Biology with high honors in 1981. After working for several years as a river ranger in Grand Teton National Park, Pete turned to writing full time in 1990, selling more than two hundred stories since then, earning numerous awards, including mentions in O. Henry and Best American Short Stories anthologies, several Pushcart Prize nominations, and four Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book of the Year Awards. He lives in Missoula, Montana (USA). In 2000 Pete Fromm published his first novel, How all this started, and in 2003 he published As cool as I am, a novel that has already been adapted into a feature film, starring Claire Danes, James Marsden and Sarah Bolger, to be released this year 2012. His latest novel If not for this is being offered to publishers now.
 
Yvette K. Willemse lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, and has long had a passion for writing. From age ten, she has written more than seven hundred poems, and fifty short stories as well as several novel sized projects. One of her short stories, Snàkeeta, was selected for publication in a New Zealander anthology of short stories. Radadazh, a fantasy fiction novel for young adults, is being offered to publishers now as the first book of her « Fledgling Chronicles », to be followed by six other titles. Yvette is currently studying towards a Diploma in Arts. Her papers are related to creative writing, editing, proofreading, and freelancing. She is an accomplished singer, currently preparing for her diploma examination as well as teaching singing pupils. Yvette also plays piano. And (born in 1993) she has become the youngest Pontas client ever!
 
An unrepentant Southerner by birth, Brandon S. Graham has lived, worked and studied in eight different states of the USA and four different countries, receiving three university degrees. He worked as a commercial pressman and an adjunct professor in Missouri and as a gallery director in Nebraska. He studied in Budapest (Hungary) and Dijon (France). He eventually settled near Chicago where he studied visual and written narrative at Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts, graduating with his MFA in 2008.
Brandon’s first short story was published in the journal Pleiades in 1990. Since then he has written for performance, artist’s books, book reviews, web content and press releases. He has continued to publish poems and prose in literary journals. His novel, Good For Nothing, is being offered to publishers now. Meanwhile, Brandon continues to make art and write in Downer’s Grove, Illinois (USA) where he lives.
How authors end up being represented by Pontas is always a story in itself. Here’s Brandon Graham’s personal story told by him in his blog: Agent search complete.
More information: anna@pontas-agency.com
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La femme de Schrödinger, the new novel by French author Emmanuelle Urien, has been acquired by Béatrice Duval at Éditions Denoël to be published in its French original language in 2013. In La femme de Schrödinger, Emmanuelle Urien sticks her blade in the open wound of a separation, in between madness and tears.
 
For years, she had been sitting happily on the see-saw, living a well-balanced, perfect love with her husband. She didn’t see the saw that sent her sprawling.
After her husband Julien cheated on her with her best friend and left her, Fatiha is suffering from a very common disease in such circumstances: she’s both alive and dead - though she admits there is no point in jumping out of a first-floor window and no sense in hating a rival who, ironically, just died. Subjective narrator of her own drama, Fatiha is an extravagant mourner and drags the readers into the comical excesses caused by this sad, trivial situation. As her three children would rather have her alive, she struggles to keep hate and grief at bay. With the support of her psychiatrist mother, Fatiha goes into action: to remove the source of the trouble, she will declare her ex-husband dead - although the deceased regularly phones the children. Until the day Julien actually disappears…
Emmanuelle Urien’s novel reminds us that a person emotionally disturbed does not always act rationally, but also that despite strange behaviors, one can always keep being profoundly human.
At Pontas we are glad to be working for Emmanuelle Urien ,an author born in the seventies in Anjou (France) who, as she says, “got lost amongst numbers in different languages before landing in Toulouse and starting to write”. After a university education in Humanities, Languages and International Finance, she is now a tri-lingual translator and writer or sometimes the opposite. She has also written fiction for Radio France before publishing her first novel Tu devrais voir quelqu’un (Gallimard, 2009).
All translation rights and film rights of La femme de Schrödinger are available.
More information: anna@pontas-agency.com
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At Pontas we are glad to announce that French production company Gedeon/Numéro 4 Production has acquired the film rights of Jason Eric Miller ’s novel Decomposition. Emmanuelle Lacaze will be producing and Clément Deneux will be writing the script adapting the novel and also directing the feature film.
 
Clément Deneux has directed two short movies so far: Zombinladen and Les ongles. He wants to develop a strong and particular universe and, together with the producer, they plan to make a great twisted road movie out of Jason Eric Miller’s novel. Their idea is to shoot in English language in the United States. Emmanuelle Lacaze has produced a first feature film so far, La vie d´une autre, adapting the novel with the same title by Frédérique Deghelt. The film will be released in France next February 15th, directed by Sylvie Testud, starring Oscar awarded Juliette Binoche and Mathieu Kassovitz.
Some comments about the novel, published in English by Ephemera Bound Publishing (USA) and in French by Éditions du Masque:
“If you feel like experiencing the darker side of obsession, this could very well be the book for you.”–TCM Reviews
“It could become a cult”–Press Southern Region
“Strange thriller therefore, that this decomposition, which is both fairy tale trash, road movie and especially murky exercise in style revisiting all the stereotypes of black American novel”–Foreign Press
Translation rights : Patricia Sánchez – pat@pontas-agency.com
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This recently started year 2012, several books by authors represented internationally by Pontas will be adapted for the screens as feature films or tv series. Sometimes the latest film rights from books to be sold to producers are the first ones to be produced; but most of the time, it takes long years to finally attend the premières and see the results of the adaptations. Here are some film adaptations under development, production, post-production or ready to be released in 2012:
 
The Door of the Courtyard (Bab al-Saha), by Palestinian author Sahar Khalifeh, focuses on the years of the first Intifada in the city of Nablus, with which the author is very familiar. Film rights have been acquired by Matthieu Warter at Cinemao Productions in France.
 
The 100-Year Old Man Who Climbed Through the Window and Disappeared by Swedish author Jonas Jonasson is under development at Nice Enternainment and the film will be directed by Felix Hengren. Several Hollywood studios are already in conversations with them for the remake rights.
 
Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes’ film rights were acquired by Michael Mann’s production company Forward Pass to team with Columbia Pictures and the script is being written by Jez Butterworth.
 
Les visages écrasés (Broken Faces) by Marin Ledun is under development at Junior Productions in France and most probably the novel will be adapted and directed for the screen by Jean-Paul Lilienfeld.
 
Film rights of Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa have been acquired by FilmWorks Dubai, with Tim Smythe and Rami Yasin producing.
A Chave the Casa, the Brazilian title of The Key of Smyrna by Tatiana Salem Levy, is under development by Toniko Melo at Circular O Desejo Filmes.
 
The Violin of Auschwitz by Catalan author Maria-Àngels Anglada is under development at Eclipse Filmverleih with Sharon won Wietersheim and Frank Meiling producing.
 
Traces of Sandalwood, the novel by Asha Miró and Anna Soler-Pont, is being packaged by Pontas; the main cast is attached and Maria Ripoll will be directing.
 
La Estrella, by Belen Carmona, is under post-production and the première is expected before May 2012 in Spanish language; the main cast includes Carmen Machi, Ingrid Rubio, Marc Clotet and Fele Martínez and the film was directed by Alberto Aranda.
 
La memoria del agua (The Memory of Water), a two-episode miniseries adapting the novel by Teresa Viejo is ready to be broadcasted by Televisión Española (TVE) in prime time the following weeks. Production has been done by BRB International with the collaboration of Pontas.
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Despite the global economical crisis, the revolutions (yet to be won) and the uncertainties about the digital rights and the fixed book price laws in several countries, this year 2011 will reach its end with many positive results too. Among them, a nice list of awards for some authors represented internationally by Pontas !
 
The 100-Year Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Swedish author Jonas Jonasson has been awarded with the M-Pionier Preis 2011 (Pioneer Prize for New Successful Authors) given by the German bookshops’ chain Mayersche Buchhandlung and with the Danish Audiobook Award 2011, together with « the voice » of Paul Becker. Besides these two awards, Jonasson has been highly rewarded by lots of readers in every language his novel has been translated into (the year will end with more than 250,000 copies sold in German, over 100,000 in French, 90,000 in Italian, 75,000 in Dutch…).
 
The last snow (La nevada de cucut), the fifth novel by Catalan author Blanca Busquets won the Catalan Booksellers Award 2011 and has been in the bestselling lists since then, of course thanks to hundreds of enthusiastic booksellers who recommend it. The novel will be translated into Spanish by Grijalbo/Random House Mondadori next March 2012 and Blanca’s two previous novels are being very successful at the moment in German (published by DTV).
 
Les visages écrasés (Broken Faces) by French author Marin Ledun (published by Éditions du Seuil) was awarded with the Trophées 813 Award 2011 for Best Crime Fiction in French . Besides, the novel was shorlisted for five other awards, among which the Prix des Lecteurs Quais du Polar 2011 and the Prix Pourpres 2011. This novel, also doing very well in Spain (published by Alienta), will be adapted into a French feature film by Junior Productions, most probably with Jean-Paul Lilienfeld as scriptwriter and director, which is also an award in itself !
 
Paraules emmetzinades (Poisoned Words) by Catalan author Maite Carranza was awarded with the Premio Nacional de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil 2011 by the Ministry of Culture of Spain. This official award recognizes the long journey of an author who has connected with young readers from more than 25 countries. Her trilogy War of Witches has been published by prestigious publishing houses such as Bloomsbury in the UK and USA, Berlin Verlag in Germany, Signatuur in The Netherlands, Pocket Jeunesse in France, etcetera and, after having reached sales over 200,000 copies since its publication, film producers seem to be finally interested…
 
Cidade Livre (Free City) by Brazilian author João Almino was awarded with the Passo Fundo Zaffari & Bourbon Literary Award for the Best Novel in Portuguese Language of the last two years (2010-2011), one of the most important awards in Brazil for its prestige and also for the cash prize. In the photo, during the acceptance speech in Passo Fundo, the southernmost state. The novel has been published by Record in Brazil and will be launched in French by Éditions Métailié in March 2012.
El sentido del viaje (The Meaning of Travelling), the still unpublished non-fiction book by Spanish author Patricia Almarcegui won the Premio Fray Luis de León de Ensayo 2011, which means its publication and a generous advance. This award has been a great way to end the year for Patricia after the publication of her first work of fiction, The Painter and the Traveller (by Ediciones B).
We look for many more international and different awards in 2012 !
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“More books, more freedom” (“Piú libri piú liberi”), the annual book fair set in Rome, took place for its tenth edition from 7-11 December 2011. This event is the occasion for small and medium sized independent publishers to meet their readers but it’s also an opportunity for international publishers and agents to know about the latest trends of Italian literature and to discover new literary voices.
 
On behalf of the Pontas team, Elisa Basolu attended this year, in our aim to look for new Italian literary voices to represent all over the world and also to find good Italian homes for the international authors already represented by Pontas. Elisa also had the chance to have several meetings with publishers and authors and to participate in many stimulating debates.
Every year in Italy around 50,000 new titles are published, 25% of which are published by a small or medium sized publishing house. “More books, more freedom” (“Piú libri piú liberi”) was launched with the idea to ensure that more books published by small independent imprints would reach the audiences and the media. Among many others, publishing houses such as Castelvecchi (launching Teresa Viejo’s novel this week), Voland (editors of Lluís-Anton Baulenas), Cavallo di Ferro (editors of Tatiana Salem Levy), Fandango, Sellerio and Fanucci were present and active in Rome these days.
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At Pontas we have just come to represent the works by French author Florence Noiville and I’m an economist, therefore I apologize is a book we consider A MUST in this time an age. It is short, straightforward and groundbreaking, so we are encouraging publishers from all over the world to make a quick reading these days and to acquire the translation rights as soon as possible!
 
With this little book published in France in 2009 by Éditions Stock under the title J´ai fait HEC et je m’en excuse, Florence Noiville caught the attention of the French media and is now having a great success in Italy (at Bollati Boringhieri) and Spain (at Deusto/Planeta), with more than 25,000 copies sold in a few months. The conclusion reached by all those who read this book: it is a punch, pure polemic. And even more now than when it was originally published!
Graduated at one of the most prestigious Economy Schools in Paris– HEC, École des Hautes Études Commerciales (some say is the most prestigious), Florence Noiville held high managing positions in a number of multinational companies, until she decided to change job radically. She addresses her class partners and ex-professors questioning what’s the use of their studies, if these cannot prevent economic crisis. She eventually accepts self-incrimination and accuses finance schools of their uselessness in a short, intense and compelling book.
 
At present, Florence Noiville is the director of literary supplement “Le Monde des Livres” of the French newspaper Le Monde and she is the author of some biographies, a successful novel (La donation) and several books for children.
More information: Patricia Sánchez – pat@pontas-agency.com
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We are glad to announce that four new authors from four very different backgrounds such as the United States, Sweden (with Kurdish origins), Spain and Argentina have signed up with Pontas recently for international representation. Every time we start representing someone we have the same feeling as if we were starting a long journey by land across several countries or even continents. We know where we want to go, but we never know how long it will take and what will we find in between.
 
Jason Eric Miller grew up in the mountains of Colorado and Montana and has also lived in California. He has been a professor of Creative Writing since 2000. His book length publications include novels and short stories. Decomposition, published by Ephemera Bound Publishing (USA) and Éditions du Masque (France), is a road trip with a caveat. At the heels of our protagonist? Hurricane Irene. In the trunk of her car? The boyfriend she’s bludgeoned to death but can’t quite leave behind. Somewhere over the horizon? The man she once abandoned and to whom she means to return. Between her and him? 1,500 miles of dark American asphalt, along which the corpse and her mind will continue to decompose, while the fairy tales she’s been fed wither, one after the other.
 
Mustafa Can was born in the (Turkish) Kurdistan in 1969. As a child he immigrated with his family to Sweden. He is a multi-awarded essayist and journalist who writes for major newspapers and magazines in Scandinavia. He has also hosted television programs for SVT and TV4. His debut novel, Day by Day – The Story of my Mother, was published in 2006 and received great reviews from the press and was sold in more than 100 000 copies in Sweden. This testimonial novel turned into one of the finest portraits ever made on a mother; a gripping, timeless story about his mother’s life and death. But, it also examines exile, alienation, homelessness and other big questions of our time. Mustafa Can is currently writing a novel that deals with memory, myths, exile and identity.
 
Carmen Santos was born in Valencia (Spain). She lived in the German city of Düsseldorf from the age of four until she was sixteen. She currently lives in Zaragoza (Spain). When she turned thirty she decided to leave her post in a multinational company in order to devote fully to what she likes most: foreign languages and literature. She has published short stories and three novels so far. Her new yet unpublished novel, Dreamings of the West Indies, takes the reader to the colonial Cuba of the 19th century through the eyes of young Valentina and to the experience that many Spaniards went through at the time, deciding to set off for the New World in search for a prosperous future. The plot starts out in 1858, year in which Valentina and her husband, both servants of the Marquises of Tormes in Madrid, decide to leave aside their life in Spain to embark on a boat that will take them, more than thirty days later, to La Habana harbour. Little can she imagine what will come once the boat sets sail…
 
Federico Axat was born in Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 1975. His first novel, Benjamin, was published in Spain by Suma de Letras and rights have been acquired in Italy by Sperling & Kupfer to be published in 2012. His stories stand out for a high dose of suspense, plot twists and surprising and unexpected endings. The Swamp of Butterflies is his new yet unpublished novel: Miranda Matheson is twelve years old and she is the daughter of a rich couple that has just moved to town. Sam Jackson is an orphan and lives in a foster farm since the age of one, after a car crash took the life of Christina, Sam´s mom. During weeks, Sam climbed at the top of a tree to secretly spy Miranda, learning about her days in the dreamy Matheson´s mansion… falling in love with her.
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From November 5th to 12th, Marc de Gouvenain, once more travelling in the Pacific region on behalf of Pontas, to New Caledonia this time, attended the SILO 2011 (Salon International du Livre Océanien).
 
This year, SILO was exceptionally set for two days in Nouméa before rejoining its usual base at Poindimié, in the Northern province. Organised every two years, this international book fair gathering writers from all over the Pacific gains in importance and has become a must “down there”, a unique event where the “Francophonie” meets the Anglosaxon world. Marc, present since the first edition of the festival in 2003, because at that time he was the French publisher of writers such as Alan Duff, Sia Figiel or Alexis Wright, and regularly a moderator in the panels, is often referred there as the “godfather of the SILO”.
SILO 2011 reinforced once more the constructive and friendly links between Caledonian writers such as Dewe Gorode, Nicolas Kurtovitch, Claudine Jacques and their neighbours from Samoa (Sia Figiel), New Zealand (Witi Ihimaera, writer and filmmaker), Australia (Michael Robotham), Polynesia (Chantal Spitz), France (Ingrid Astier) as well as with publishers from the Pacific (Au Vent des Iles) and France, or a representative from Brisbane Book Fair (Australia).
In April 2012, the focus of Saint Malo book festival in France will be the South Seas, and Pontas, representing several writers from the Pacific region, directly or on behalf of a publisher (Au Vent des Iles) has already developed an efficient network in the Antipodes, an immense and rich literary territory, often totally unexplored, that should interest many publishers. Here below, Marc de Gouvenain with Nicolas Kurtovitch and Michael Robotham; and Ingrid Astier signing.
 
Back in France and still dizzy from the jetlag, Marc de Gouvenain attended the eight edition of Festival Paris Polar.This festival, limited to the noir genre, proposes not only debates but exhibitions, films and investigation games. Marc participated in a round table on Crime Fiction in the Nordic Countries and had the honour to share the microphone with Arni Thorarinsson from Iceland (in the photo). The recent wave of Nordic crime cannot hide that France has also very good confirmed crime writers, see in Pontas list Ingrid Astier or Marin Ledun, among others!
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At Pontas we are glad to announce that Filmworks Dubai have acquired film rights for Mornings in Jenin, the international bestseller by Susan Abulhawa. Originally published in English by Bloomsbury the novel has already been published in translation in more than 20 countries and is a real phenomenon in Norway and Italy, among many other territories.
  
Tim Smythe and Rami Yasin are attached as producers and will be leading the project’s development with plans to go into production in the latter part of 2013. Filmworks Dubai are known for producing City of Life and Djinn (here below a photo on set) as well as being the production partners on major Hollywood features like Syriana, The Kingdom and most recently Mission Impossible 4 .
  
What the novel is about: Palestine, 1948. The Abulheja family are forcibly removed from their ancestral home in Ein Hod and sent to live in a refugee camp in Jenin. Through Amal, the bright granddaughter of the patriarch, we witness the stories of her brothers: one, a stolen boy who becomes an Israeli soldier; the other who will be sacrificing everything for the Palestinian cause. Amal’s own dramatic story threads its way through six decades of Israeli–Palestinian tension: it is one of love and loss, of childhood, marriage and parenthood, and finally the need to share history with her daughter, to preserve the greatest love she has.
  
More information: anna@pontas-agency.com
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