W&N pre-empts Sarah Maria Griffin’s ‘wildly original’ novel in major six-figure deal

W&N has pre-empted Everything Not Saved – a "multi-layered mystery, an earth-shattering love story and a meditation on the power and beauty of storytelling, in art and life" – and a second novel by Irish Book Award-winning author Sarah Maria Griffin.

Alexa von Hirschberg, publishing director, acquired world rights, excluding US and Canada, from Bryony Woods at Bryony Woods Literary Agency in a major six-figure deal. Everything Not Saved will be published by W&N in spring 2028.

Pitched as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow meets The Rachel Incident and Lincoln in the Bardo, Everything Not Saved centres around Orla Birch, an Irish academic in her late 30s with a specialism in video games, living in San Francisco and facing financial ruin, who is asked to track down the only surviving copy of a lost game.

Von Hirschberg said: "Wildly original and beautifully written, this absorbing, clever and wise novel about grief, desire and fandom hooked me in and kept me glued to the page – Sarah Maria Griffin is an exceptional storyteller and Everything Not Saved will be a major lead title for W&N in 2028."

The author said: "I’m absolutely delighted to have found a home with W&N, and I am bowled over by their true enthusiasm and plans for Everything Not Saved. Alexa came to this project with a real understanding of the kind of story I am trying to tell about art and legacy and power, and has very much met me in the work. This novel was written with support from the Arts Council of Ireland, during my pregnancy and the hazy newborn season of my daughter’s life. Without the bursary awarded to me in 2024, I wouldn’t have had the means or frankly, the courage to continue working on this story at such an intense and vulnerable time.

"I wrote it during a period of confinement in a hospital bed, in waiting rooms, and eventually with my daughter asleep in my arms, late at night. Bryony Woods championed this novel from our first conversation about it, and I feel very lucky to have both her faith and expertise behind me. I have never experienced more joy in the act of writing, and it’s my hope that that same feeling meets readers when this book arrives in the world in 2028."

Griffin is the author of Eat the Ones You Love and the Irish Book Award-winning YA novel Other Words For Smoke (Titan Books). In 2025 she was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards and Library Association Author of the Year. She writes about video games for the Guardian, and her non-fiction has appeared in the Irish Times, the Winter Papers and the Stinging Fly. She was recently selected as the Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin.