Primero Sueño Signs Cuevas and Marquardt's Adult Debut

Primero Sueño, the bilingual imprint launched by Atria earlier this year, has inked two six-figure, preempt deals with PEN/Faulkner Award–longlisted coauthors Mayra Cuevas and Marie Marquardt. 

Yezanira Venecia at Primero Sueño has pre-empted North American rights to How to Fake a Southern Gentleman by PEN/Faulkner Award-longlisted coauthors Mayra Cuevas and Marie Marquardt. The deal was negotiated by Erin Harris at Folio Literary Management, Saritza Hernández at Andrea Brown Literary Agency, and Joelle Hobeika at Alloy Entertainment. Pitched as a gender-swapped contemporary reimagining of My Fair Lady, the novel follows a Latina journalist who teams up with a single mom to transform a pool hustler into a Southern gentleman in order to take down a tycoon who is trying to gentrify their city and ruin their lives. How to Fake a Southern Gentleman will be published in 2026.

In an exclusive submission, Venecia has also acquired North American rights to Cuevas and Marquardt's ¡Sol!, a retelling of the 1954 film Sabrina, set on a majestic ranch in Jackson Hole, where the caretaker’s daughter, a Puerto Rican teen, falls for the younger son in a family of billionaires, but, returning after years of travel through Latin America, finds herself at odds with his duty-minded older brother, who is also falling for her. The deal for the adult novel was negotiated by Erin Harris at Folio Literary Management and Saritza Hernández at Andrea Brown Literary Agency. ¡Sol! will be published in 2027.

Cuevas and Marquardt are coauthors of the 2022 YA novel Does My Body Offend You? (Knopf) and a forthcoming YA novel from Knopf Books for Young Readers, slated for 2025.