Scribe acquires book by Katrina Marson
Scribe has acquired world rights (ex-NA) in a nonfiction book about sexual violence — its causes and its solutions — by ACT-based prosecutor Katrina Marson.
The book will be both a reflection on the limitations of the justice system and a call to overhaul Australia's approach to sex-education. Katrina is an expert on these topics from two distinct angles — as a criminal lawyer who's spent years in court prosecuting (and for one year defending) people accused of sexual offences, and as a Churchill Fellow who spent three months travelling around the world, conducting research in the US, the UK, and Europe to determine what successful relationships and sexuality education looks like. Her book will take as its foundation the understanding that having access to age-appropriate sex-ed is a fundamental human right of kids and adolescents, and further, that sex-ed is one of the key ways that societies can address sexual violence.
Katrina Marson has been researching the protective power of sex-ed to prevent sexual violence for a decade. She has been a criminal lawyer since 2013, primarily in the areas of family violence and sexual offences. On secondment for two years, Katrina led the implementation of the Child Sexual Abuse Royal Commission's criminal justice recommendations in the ACT before returning to the ACT DPP as the 2IC of the Sexual Offences Unit. She is the lead researcher of primary prevention at Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy, and is the President of the Relationships and Sexuality Education Alliance in the ACT.
Katrina said, ‘I feel privileged to have the opportunity to contribute what I have learned to this urgent conversation about young people's right to access information that will help safeguard their sexual wellbeing. It is incumbent on us all to dismantle the pernicious scourge of sexual violence. I am humbled that my passion and my words have found a home at Scribe, and am especially thrilled to work with Marika.’
Associate publisher Marika Webb-Pullman said, ‘Katrina has already achieved so much with her work in this field, and we are honoured to be part of bringing that work to new audiences. Her writing is deeply researched, humane, and compelling, and her book will be an essential contribution to an increasingly serious topic.’
Rights were acquired from Grace Heifetz at Left Bank Literary, and the book will be published in the second half of 2022.