Nicholas Herring, award-winning novelist, returns with second novel.
Goose Lane Editions has acquired world rights to Nicholas Herring’s second novel Your Breath in Charcoal. This marks the follow-up to Herring’s acclaimed debut Some Hellish, which won the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. The Prince Edward Island-based author’s next novel is expected to be published in Fall 2026.
Like Herring’s debut, which drew comparisons to David Adams Richards, Your Breath in Charcoal has its roots set in Atlantic Canada, on P.E.I. The beautifully crafted novel centers around Knickle, a young, working-class Islander who heads westward to find himself, and in the process experiences friendship, madness, love, and loss.
“I couldn’t be prouder of Goose Lane’s acquisition of Nicholas Herring’s Your Breath in Charcoal,” said fiction editor Bethany Gibson. “Herring is an extraordinary artist; as close to a genius as I have read. I am privileged to work to encourage his emphatic literary vision.”
Herring’s writing has appeared in The Puritan and The Fiddlehead. He graduated from St. Jerome’s University with an honours degree in English Literature and earned an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. He lives in Murray Harbour, PEI.
