Jason Mott follows award-winning meta-novel with novel about award-winning author

NEW YORK (AP) — Jason Mott's first novel since “Hell of a Book” is a kind of meta-sequel to his award-winning meta-narrative about a Black author's haunting promotional tour.

The Penguin Random House imprint Dutton announced Thursday that it has reached a deal with Mott for “People Like Us,” in which a “prize-winning Black author” embarks on a global book tour that finds him experiencing everything from invisibility and time travel to sea monsters and peacocks. “Hell of a Book," published in 2021, won the National Book Award for fiction and was chosen for Jenna Bush Hager's “Today” show book club.

“People Like Us” is scheduled for release next fall.

‘“People Like Us' originally began as a memoir. I was attempting to sort through some of the impactful experiences I had both as an author and as a teacher recently, and over the last few years," Mott said in a statement. “After a few false starts, I came to realize that, for me, exploring truth requires the framework of fiction. When I returned to the page with that understanding about myself and how I try to create art, I found the characters from ’Hell Of A Book' waiting for me, with new heartaches and joys they wanted to share.”

Mott's other books include the novels “The Returned” and “The Calling” and poetry collection “We Call This Thing Between Us Love.”