My Antarctica Book is Coming!

And it's SPOILER ALERT livestream night

Dear Readers,

I can finally talk to you about my Antarctica book! I’ve been bursting at the seams with this news for months (years?) and now it’s official.

It’s called Seed and it’ll be out in October. Here’s the blurb:

Mitchell is a brilliant biologist and a prominent figure in the growing global antinatalist movement. For one month each year he and his colleague Frances live in a childfree utopia of radical equality and science in Antarctica. They are finishing off the Anarctos Project: a seed vault in an isolated, secret location, an insurance policy against a failing planet. But their helicopter doesn’t pick them up and strange things begin to happen. With the clock ticking for them to get back to McMurdo Station before the last flight home and the beginning of a long dark polar winter, these two people of firm logic and reason begin finding fault lines in their perfect social experiment. The vast white expanse starts to haunt Mitchell with memories of a devastating betrayal, and questions of legacy and fairness crowd his mind. As the days get shorter, we realise he has been keeping big secrets—not just from Frances, but also from himself.

An original, propulsive, deeply unsettling glimpse into love, isolation and our worst fears.

My agent, Grace Heifetz (left) said:

‘With every book Bri writes, she dials it up, taking big ideas and placing them within stories that provoke and force one to see the world in different ways. Seed solidifies Bri as an extraordinary writer of fiction and it will absolutely blow your mind.’

And my publisher, Jane Palfreyman (right) said:

‘With Seed, Bri has surpassed even my expectations and created a white-knuckle ride into a magnificently rendered locked-room thriller of global proportions, a scenario in which only two characters reflect and refract our world with nuance, tension, intelligence and compassion. Seed is a stunning short, epic novel of our times and I am so proud and excited to welcome it and Bri Lee to Summit Books and S&S.’

I am so grateful to have been with Grace and Jane since the very beginning of my career. Seed has involved a lot of risks—both on the page and off the page—and I couldn’t have done it all without their support. The huge trip to Antarctica in 2023 was the first time I really wanted to back myself to that extent, and they gave me the confidence to commit. The research I’ve done into antinatalism and family planning in the climate emergency is confronting and difficult subject matter, but Grace and Jane have sat with me in those tough places. I feel honoured they placed so much faith in me.

I’d also like to take a beat here to thank you, my community of Five Star Nerds. I believe Seed meets our moment but it will probably divide readers. We live and work in a digital sea of bad faith actors and wilful misrepresentations, but somehow this little space we’ve made together on Wednesdays is a life raft. When I made the characters in Seed think and do and say bad things, occasionally I would wonder if those sentiments might be pulled out of context and attributed to me. The philosophical questions at the heart of this book are uncomfortable, and it’s always easier to respond in outrage than genuine rumination. But I hate fiction that even has a whiff of the soapbox. Compromise and capitulation reeks through the page, don’t you think? I’ve taken risks in Seed and it was with the confidence that I had my own readers here and they were smart and capable of sitting with conflicting ideas. This is all sounding dramatic now, but actually it is a Huge Fucking Deal to make art with less fear. So thank you for that. Thank you everyone here for being thoughtful.

Let’s talk about Seed in the livestream tonight!

I’ll answer any questions you’ve got. Then we’ll dig into our two books. Then we’ll discuss the publishing industry bit. I emailed some questions to Penny Hueston, Senior Editor at Text Publishing, about their being bought by Penguin Random House, and she’s responded with some voice memos for me to play you. It’s gonna be a juicy ep! See you at 6.30pm.

Best wishes and happy reading,

Bri

Spoiler Alert Link