Taiwanese-American author Theresa Hottel has joined the Pontas Agency with her debut novel Dust, which was pre-empted by Nadxieli Nieto at Algonquin/Little, Brown (US) in her first acquisition in her new position as editorial director at the imprint and it will be published as a lead title in mid-2026. UK rights have been snapped up by Clare Smith at Abacus/Little, Brown (to be published in early 2027). The acquisition has been announced publicly as the Deal of the Week on PW:
All translation as well as film/TV rights are currently available.
1930s Oklahoma, during the Dust Bowl, is a time of great confusion, social, economic, ecological—and supernatural. In the flowing dust, some people are seeing strange, otherworldly creatures, while others insist this is superstition, heresy, fraud, or madness. Shadowy flora supposedly sprout from human skin, and half-glimpsed fauna roam the dry prairie. As eerie, mesmerizing interactions with these “duskin” interfere with lives and livelihood, an informal organization of “dust doctors,” lonely wanderers, travel the Plains, braving dust storms and drought to help people and explore the duskin.
The best of these wanderers, a man named Draper, is drawn to an isolated town in need of his aid. To enter he must leave his close companions, and there he encounters more mystery, pain, and duskin than ever before, as well as strong bonds with townspeople who challenge and aid him. One of these is Bobby Sue, a twenty-five-year-old half-Chinese white-passing school teacher, who is both cautious and curious, and increasingly determined to understand and protect the children in her care who appear to be able to hear and communicate with the duskin.
Born in Taipei and raised in southern Oklahoma, Theresa Hottel writes about ghosts, women, and landscape. Her fiction appears in No Tokens Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Vol 1. Brooklyn, as well as the anthology Tiny Nightmares (Catapult Books, 2020). She has received support from Art Omi: Writers, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, and Homestead National Monument of America, among other organizations, and she was awarded a 2018 Honorable Mention from the Otherwise Fellowship, for speculative narratives that explore and expand understandings of gender. She edited the documentary film Truth Be Told, a collaboration with Emmy award-winning director Nneka Onuorah, which premiered at Outfest LA and won the 2023 Social Impact Award.
Theresa holds a BA from Oklahoma City University and an MFA from Columbia University. After almost a decade in New York, she currently lives in Barcelona.
For more information about the above title, please contact Carla Briner (carla@pontas-agency.com).