By now you have either read or heard a friends of yours talk at great length about “Cat Person,” the great, viral New Yorker story about a college student who has a disgusting (but terrifyingly ordinary) sexual episode with an entitled misogynist. If you missed the story, perhaps you saw a few of the truly unnecessary articles (and a Twitter account) analyzing its characters and readers that followed the story’s publication. But now some good news: Kristen Roupenian, the story’s star author, is well on her way to earning a million-dollar book deal.
The Guardian reports that author Kristen Roupenian’s forthcoming, debut short story collection You Know You Want This was sold to UK publisher Jonathon Cape for a “high five figure sum.” And now the book is at auction in the US, with The Guardian reporting that 11 bidders have pushed the collection’s price “over $1 million.”
In an interview with the New York Times, Roupenian said that she only really committed to writing fiction in the last five years after deciding not to join the Foreign Service to become a diplomat. Michal Shavit at Cape describes her new collection as “dark, funny, irreverent” with stories that are “very different to one another.” “They’re occupying a similar space in the imagination, but they’re not all about the relationships between men and women … I genuinely think she’s a brilliant writer,” he says.
Update, 12/20/17: Kristen Roupenian has reportedly landed a seven-figure book deal with Scout Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Two publishing officials told the AP that bidding topped $1 million. The story collection will be out spring 2019.