Fresh off the release of A24’s critically acclaimed movie I Saw the TV Glow, director Jane Schoenbrun has announced their next project this morning. It’s a novel, and it’s coming soon.
Hogarth, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, will publish Public Access Afterworld, the debut novel by acclaimed writer and director Jane Schoenbrun, whose most recent film I Saw the TV Glow has received widespread acclaim and is in theaters now.
North American rights were acquired at auction by Hogarth editor in chief David Ebershoff from Bill Clegg of The Clegg Agency.
An epic blend of literary fantasy, coming-of-age, sci fi, and horror, Public Access Afterworld traces the mysterious transmissions of a secret television network known as “Public Access Afterworld” that draws in a wide cast of characters, from two teenage best friends in a suburban New York basement to a housewife during the last days of World War II to a young trans content moderator at a YouTube-like corporation, who becomes an unlikely hero capable of rescuing a century of victims disappeared into the broadcast’s signal.
Public Access Afterworld is a thrilling and profound novel of identity, conspiracy, the secret occult history of American entertainment, and the narratives that guide our lives and shape our world.
“All of my work so far has been leading up to this,” says Jane Schoenbrun. “Public Access Afterworld is the culmination of my so-called ‘screen trilogy’ that I began with ‘We’re All Going to the World’s Fair’ and ‘I Saw the TV Glow.’ But unlike those works, which focused mainly on pre-transition, this novel is an epic of trans becoming, and probably the biggest cinematic universe I’ll ever create, my attempt to craft a contemporary queer opus on the scale of ‘Sandman,’ ‘Lord of the Rings,’ or even, groan, ‘Harry Potter.'”
“I fell in love with Jane’s Public Access Afterworld,” says their editor, Ebershoff. “It’s an all-consuming reading experience that engages you on every level with its masterful storytelling, fascinating ideas about gender, identity, and technology; and, above all, its unforgettable characters, especially Bethany, the trans woman who becomes a hero unlike any we’ve ever seen before in epic fiction. Although the novel is about conspiracies and terror and the overwhelming power technology has on our daily lives, it’s really about the special friendships young people make as they figure out how the world works and who they really are.”