Event Recording
November 9, 2021
This From Manuscript to Marketplace event features Priyanka Champaneri, the author of The City of Good Death, in conversation with literary agent Leigh Feldman and Restless Books editor and marketing director Nathan Rostron. Designed with an audience of fellow writers in mind, From Manuscript to Marketplace offers case studies of the path to publication and candid conversations about the current realities of publicity, social media, virtual events, working with agents and editors, and more. Each event provides a unique portrait of the collaborative process behind the scenes.
If you would like to purchase The City of Good Death, we recommend using one of the indie bookseller links on the author’s website here.
Priyanka Champaneri received her MFA in creative writing from George Mason University and has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts numerous times. Her debut novel, The City of Good Death, won the 2018 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and was recently shortlisted for the 2021 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Photo by Lauren Brennan.
Nathan Rostron is the editor and marketing director of Restless Books, a Brooklyn-based independent, nonprofit publisher of international literature. Previously, he helped to launch the innovative book discovery startup Bookish.com as its literary editor, and was an editor at Little, Brown and Company, where he edited several award winners and New York Times bestsellers. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Nathan holds a BA in English from Pomona College and a Masters in English and Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin.
Leigh Feldman has established herself as an invaluable partner to the writers she represents and is highly respected by her peers in the industry. Her agency, Leigh Feldman Literary, is the culmination of experiences and lessons learned from her 20-plus years at Darhansoff, Verrill, Feldman Literary Agency and Writer’s House. In that time, Feldman has represented National Book Award winners and bestsellers of literary fiction, historical fiction, memoir, middle grade, and young adult. No matter the writer or the category, Feldman only represents books she believes in, that captivate her, and that she can best serve with her passion and tenacity.
Priyanka Champaneri’s transcendent, prize-winning debut novel brings us inside India’s holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death, while his own past refuses to let him go. As the dutiful manager of a death hostel in Banaras on the banks of the Ganges, Pramesh Prasad administers to dying Hindu pilgrims who hope to be released from earthly reincarnation. He lives and works contentedly with his wife, Shobha, their young daughter, Rani, the hostel priests, his hapless but winning assistant Mohan, and the constant flow of families with their dying kin. But one day the past arrives in the form of a body pulled from the river—a man with an uncanny resemblance to Pramesh. Told in lush, vivid detail and with an unforgettable cast of characters, The City of Good Death is a remarkable debut novel of family and love, memory and ritual, and the ways in which we honor the living and the dead (Restless Books).
