Headline’s Welbeck Non-Fiction and Mountain Leopard Press have signed ex-prisoner Linda Calvey for a memoir and further novels.
On the non-fiction side, editorial director Oliver Holden-Rea acquired world all-language rights from Kerr MacRae at Kerr MacRae LPA to a memoir about Calvey’s time inside some of the UK’s most notorious prisons. Life Inside: The Hard Reality of Prison and What It Takes To Survive will publish on 4th January 2024, as a hardback, trade paperback, e-book and audiobook, and will be a lead title for Welbeck Non-Fiction.
Life Inside explores the “systems, characters and rules of prison life” from Calvey, who was one of Britain’s longest-serving female prisoners. The synopsis says: “As well as telling stories of fights, dodgy dealings and screws getting taken hostage, it also looks at her unlikely encounters with notorious criminals Charles Bronson, Rose West and Myra Hindley.”
Holden-Rea added: “I am happy to be publishing the follow-up to Linda’s first memoir, The Black Widow. There was still so much of Linda’s story left to tell and no one better to look at the harsh and fascinating world of prison life, as well what it takes to make it out the other side, than Linda. Her story is captivating story but also beautifully human, and I cannot wait for people to read.”
