Conduit Books reveals Shaun Wilson's Malc’s Boy as its first publication
Freshly launched publisher Conduit Books has announced that its inaugural title will be Malc’s Boy, “a bold and emotionally charged” debut novel by Cumbrian writer Shaun Wilson, following 1,500 submissions over the past few months.
Publisher Jude Cook – who founded the publisher earlier this year – acquired world rights directly from the author. Malc’s Boy will lead Conduit Books’ debut list in 2026.
Wilson’s early draft of Malc’s Boy won a New Writing North’s Northumbria University Student and Alumni Award in 2021, with an excerpt later appearing in Granta. His writing featured in Kit de Waal’s Common People: An Anthology of Working-Class Writers (Unbound, 2019). Born in 1980 and raised in Wigton, he has appeared at book festivals, on BBC Radio and recently completed a placement at the indie publisher Semiotext(e). He has a PhD in English and creative writing from Northumbria University, where he has also taught.
