Sphere lands a ‘brilliant, moving story about human connection’

Sphere has acquired Dear Neighbour by Jane Claire Bradley, an uplifting debut novel about intergenerational friendship and five strangers finding much-needed community.

Editor Callum Kenny acquired World All Language Rights from Silvia Molteni at PFD. Sphere will publish in hardback, eBook and audio in June 2023, with a B format paperback following in 2024.

Dear Neighbour is inspired by the vibrant history of community action in the North of England. Alice is working hard to provide for her daughter, Mollie. But as a single mum living in Leeds, a city she barely knows, it’s a challenge. Her neighbours keep to themselves and she yearns for connection.

Bill has lived on Leodis Street for eighty years. It’s where he was born, began his married life and eventually cared for his wife in her final days. Now his home is a place of solitude, his talisman against an unrecognisable world.

When the residents of Leodis Street are threatened with eviction, Alice decides to make a stand. As she reaches out to her neighbours and learns about their lives, she is surprised to discover that she might already live next door to the community she’s been seeking . . .

Jane Claire Bradley is an award-winning, queer, working-class author and educator based in Manchester. Her first, unpublished, novel received the Northern Debut of the Year Award from New Writing North. She has been featured as a contributing author in The Modern Craft (2022), So Long As You Write: Women on Writing (2022), and Test Signal (2021), a ground-breaking anthology of contemporary Northern writing. Dear Neighbour is her debut novel.

Bradley said: ‘For me, politics, identity, creativity and community have always been interconnected, and Dear Neighbour is a real celebration of all those elements. With so many being impacted by austerity and housing insecurity right now, this novel is a love letter to the necessity of resilience, resistance and empathy, and I’m so excited to have it be published by Sphere.’

Callum Kenny said: ‘I’m so proud to be publishing Dear Neighbour. It is simultaneously a brilliant, moving story about human connection, and a warning against the forces of gentrification and corporate greed. Infused with Jane’s spirit of activism, this story moved me deeply and reminded me, a born Loiner, of the idiosyncrasies of Northern culture. Deeply specific but totally universal, I related to the characters and I know readers will fall in love with them too.’