Thanks to Hill Street Press, Rosemary Daniell's Southern-accented feminist classic Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex, and Suicide in the Deep South will be brought back into print and should be transplanted to shelves by September.
Miriam Center, a customer at Regina's Books in Savannah, Ga., nominated the title for Hill Street Press's first annual Palimpsest Prize, a competition to bring out-of-print books back to print. Center will receive a $100 cash award for having her recommendation chosen, and Regina's will receive $500 worth of inventory of the revived title when Hill Street reissues the trade paperback with a new cover design.
Daniell, a Savannah resident and founder of the Zuna Rosa national network of women's writing groups, will also begin a regional tour for the revival at Regina's Books, a six-year-old store.
Last year, Hill Street Press decided that bringing back hits from the recent past was the speediest route to building a marketable backlist, and the Palimpsest Prize competition was born. Hill Street received more than 100 nominations, and the staff selected the winning entry. "We started the competition with the idea that booksellers and their customers would tell us what books they miss seeing on their shelves," editor-in-chief Judy Long told PW. "While we received so many wonderful nominations and it was really hard choosing between them, we're honored to launch the prize with such a notable book."
Fatal Flowers, hailed by Newsweek as among "the most important books ever published out of the South," was released in 1980 by Holt, before Rinehart &Winston was dropped from its corporate name, and continued its long run as an Avon trade paperback, followed by one from the initial publisher.
Daniell, who most recently wrote the memoir and writing guide The Woman Who Spilled Words All Over Herself (Faber &Faber), said that learning her debut nonfiction success would soon be given a second life was even more exciting than receiving Holt's initial contract. The prize, she added, confirms a continuing enthusiasm for her deconstruction of the Bible Belt's guilt over sensuality. "I had no idea the book would cause such controversy when it was first published, or that readers all over the country would write to me, saying how much it changed their lives," Daniell told PW. "Now when people ask me where they can get a copy, I'm so happy to say it will be available again."
Although Hill Street has a Southern focus, president and publisher Tom Payton pointed out that nominations also came in electronically from outside the South, resulting in a decision to open the house's Web site (www.hillstreetpress.com) for year-round competition entries. Nonbooksellers, however, are requested to identify their favorite local store.
