Lili Wilkinson – Jill Grinberg Literary Management

Lili Wilkinson

Lili Wilkinson is the author of over a dozen books for children and young adults, including the YA novels The Boundless Sublime, After the Lights Go Out, and The Erasure Initiative. Her latest YA novel, A Hunger of Thorns, was published in April 2023. Her forthcoming titles, Deep is the Fen and Unhallowed Halls, are forthcoming from Delacorte in Spring 2024 and 2025 respectively. As L.M. Wilkinson, she is the author of Bravepaw and the Heartstone of Alluria, the first in a new middle grade series illustrated by Lavanya Naidu. She helped establish InsideADog.com.au and The Inky Awards — Australia’s first national teen choice award — at the State Library of Victoria’s Centre for Youth Literature. She received her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne, and lives in Melbourne with her husband and son.

Agent

Katelyn Detweiler

Unhallowed Halls

Lydia Gregovic at Delacorte Press has acquired, in an exclusive submission, Unhallowed Halls by Lili Wilkinson (A Hunger of Thorns), a dark academia YA fantasy in which a teen girl travels to an exclusive boarding school located deep within the Scottish moorlands after a deadly incident at her old school, but her fresh start is interrupted when she discovers that its halls are hiding centuries of secrets—including an ancient society that may have ties to demonic magic. Publication is planned for spring 2025. Katelyn Detweiler at Jill Grinberg Literary Management did the deal for North American rights.

Publisher

Delacorte

Publication Date

Spring 2025

Age Category

Young Adult

Genre

Fantasy

Rights

JGLM

Bravepaw and the Heartstone of Alluria

An epic Tail of Adventure! Can one gallant mouse find the Heartstone and save her homeland from destruction?

When the sky fills with shadows
And all is turned to grey
Bravepaw will come

When hope turns to ashes
And all have lost their way
Bravepaw will come

The heart will light the dark
Night will turn to day
When Bravepaw comes

Brought up on tales of the gallant mouse hero Bravepaw, Titch has always dreamed of adventure, but she never thought it would actually happen to her. Afterall, she is nobody special. She is the smallest mouse in her family, living in a peaceful little village where nothing exciting ever happens.

When dire trouble comes to the Plateau, Titch and her best-friend Huckleberry must set out on a dangerous quest to take the Heartstone to the heart of Alluria, and repair the crack in the sky before the whole world breaks apart. Can Titch ever hope to live up to the legend of Bravepaw?

A fully illustrated and brilliantly readable adventure full of magic and prophecy, quests, heroism and loyal friendship – the world of Bravepaw will hook young readers until the very last page. This is the stuff of legend.

Publisher

Allen & Unwin

Publication Date

September 3, 2024

Age Category

Middle Grade

Genre

Fantasy

Rights

Allen & Unwin

Deep Is the Fen

Get lost in the newest fantasy from the author of A Hunger of Thorns, on a beguiling journey behind the closed doors of a sinister secret society. Featuring a steamy enemies-to-lovers romance and a fight for the witching world that will get your heart racing.

Merry doesn’t need a happily-ever-after. Her life in the charming, idyllic town of Candlecott is fine just as it is. Simple, happy, and with absolutely no magic. Magic only ever leads to trouble.

But Merry’s best friend, Teddy, is joining the Toadmen—a secret society who specialize in backward thinking and suspiciously supernatural traditions—and Merry is determined to stop him. Even if it means teaming up with the person she hates most: her academic archnemesis, Caraway Boswell, an ice-cold snob who hides his true face under a glamour.

An ancient Toad ritual is being held in the sinister Deeping Fen, and if Merry doesn’t rescue Teddy before it’s finished, she’ll lose him forever. But the Toadmen have been keeping dangerous secrets, and so has Caraway. The farther Merry travels into Deeping Fen’s foul waters, the more she wonders if she’s truly come to save her friend . . . or if she’s walking straight into a trap.

There’s nothing the Toadmen love more than a damsel in distress.

Praise for Deep is the Fen

“Wilkinson employs beguiling imagery to craft a thought-provoking love letter to fierce and tenderhearted friendship.” –Publishers Weekly

“An entertaining, well-characterized foray into a world of magical secrets.” –Kirkus

“Deep is the Fen is an enchanting adventure. Wilkinson weaves a sinister fairy tale as glittering as it is grim, where a slimy cult battles cunning witches, and where love runs deep as blood and bone.” –Ann Fraistat, author of What We Harvest

“Deep is the Fen was a delight and a horror—this whimsical world of hot buttered scones, prize hens, and country cottages were enough to charm and disarm me, but sinister secrets kept me entrapped, too afraid to look away. Witches, toads, a touch of romance, and a heroine to root for—I loved it!” –Amanda Linsmeier, author of Starlings

“[An] immersive, fascinating allegory that tackles, among other things, toxic masculinity and government control over women’s bodies. Patient readers will be well rewarded with a nimble, romantic, and clever fantasy that pushes boundaries.” –Booklist

“Evocative and deeply atmospheric, this novel offers a fen-deep narrative that will suck readers in with a fast-paced plot and moments of heartbreak, budding romance, and rousing revolution.” –BCCB

Publisher

Delacorte

Publication Date

April 16, 2024

Age Category

Young Adult

Genre

Fantasy

Rights

JGLM

A Hunger of Thorns

Praise for A Hunger of Thorns

“Full of vivid and poetic prose, this girl-power fantasy will win fans among lovers of magic in the natural world. Recommended for junior high and high school collections.” –School Library Journal

“Wilkinson offers plenty of tantalizing surprises in this tangled volume featuring complicated familial connections, dangerous secrets, and even more perilous obsessions.” –Publishers Weekly

“The luscious depth of the worldbuilding and the effortless skill with which it is conveyed make me utterly jealous. Read this, and wonder where Lili Wilkinson has been all your life.” –Amie Kaufman, New York Timesbestselling coauthor of the Aurora Cycle

“A Hunger of Thorns is visceral fantasy; it tells its story not just in the bodies of young people but through all creation around them. This novel teems with life-forms real and imagined—winged, scaled, furred, barked and leaved, macro and micro, solid and almost intangible. It zooms in with scientific precision, then pivots to passionate invention. Maude’s quest will take you to deep, dark, festering places and bring you soaring back out into the light. This novel resonates strongly with our uncertain times. It will give courage and hope to readers seeking their true selves and a way forward into a richer, realer life.” –Margo Lanagan, author of Printz Honor Book Tender Morsels

“In this wonderful book, Wilkinson creates a whole new kind of magic—enchantments woven from family, from living things, and from the marrow of Story itself. Unlike anything else.” –Scott Westerfeld, author of the Uglies and Impostors series

“A gorgeous dark fantasy about the unshakeable bond between two girls, and the undeniable power of female rage.” –Kass Morgan, New York Times bestselling author ofThe 100

“A lush, spellbinding tale with dangerously enchanting characters, A Hunger of Thorns is filled with gorgeous emotion and sapphic yearning that will leave you breathless. Wilkinson’s masterful new story soars. This is one for all the wild girls who get lost in fairy tales.” –C. S. Pacat, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Rise

Publisher

Delacorte

Publication Date

April 18, 2023

Age Category

Young Adult

Genre

Fantasy

Rights

JGLM

The Boundless Sublime

Ruby Jane Galbraith has nothing left. After an accident tears her family apart, she finds her entire world obliterated. And it’s all her fault. The only thing that makes sense to her is Fox—a gentle new friend who is wise, soulful, and clever, yet oddly naive about the ways of the world. Fox understands her loss. Her pain. And he offers her a way out – a chance to find peace in a community that seems guided by love. He asks her to join him at the Institute of the Boundless Sublime. Ruby knows one thing for sure: her life without Fox is a life she doesn’t want to live, and the Institute is the only way to keep him. But as she’s drawn into the Institute’s web, Ruby begins to learn its sinister secrets. A fast-paced plot and searing prose drive this gripping drama about an ordinary girl drawn into a secretive cult and how far she will go for love.

Praise for The Boundless Sublime

“The prose does not shy away from the horrors Ruby finds as she tried to question everything about her new community. A suspense-filled read not for the faint-hearted.” –School Library Journal

Publisher

Switch Press

Publication Date

March 1, 2018

Age Category

Young Adult

Genre

Contemporary/Thriller

Rights

JGLM