Robinson has acquired World All Language rights in Kathy Slack’s first non-fiction book from Rebecca Ritchie at AM Heath. Publishing director Emma Smith acquired the rights for Rough Patch: How a Year in the Garden Brought Me Back to Life. The book will publish in hardback and e-book with illustrations by Rosie Ramsden, and in audio edition, on 6th February 2025.
Rough Patch is a memoir of breakdown, recovery, growth and lessons from the earth. It follows Kathy after she was forced to quit her high-flying career in London, and was a wreck. She explains how she found solace in an unlikely place—the vegetable patch.
Kathy Slack is a food writer, stylist, photographer and kitchen gardener who previously worked at Daylesford Organic Farm, before becoming a full-time writer and recipe developer, hosting supper clubs and cookery demonstrations with harvests from her garden, as well as food styling and developing recipes for brands and publications.
Smith said: “This is a beautiful, enriching memoir that we are all so thrilled to be publishing—a book that Kathy has grown with such care and candour. In among the weeds of life that threaten to overwhelm us, Rough Patch roots us more deeply, with nature and with ourselves.”
Slack said: “The switch from writing recipes to writing about my experience of growing that food, of digging a little deeper, is a change I made with excitement and trepidation in equal measure. So I was over the moon that Rough Patch found a home in the most competent and gentle hands of Robinson. Emma and her team are heavyweights in both cookery and memoir and work in a refreshingly open, collaborative and nimble way, encouraging my aim to create a book that is uplifting, delicious and, I hope, joyful.”
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