A fun article in The New York Times explores the surprising story of “Kate Alcott”, the “author” of The Dressmaker. “Kate” is a pseudonym for author Patricia O’Brien. The Dressmaker would be her seventh novel, even though it’s Kate’s first. Her editor at Doubleday, Melissa Danaczko, explains the process of signing the book:
Ms. Danaczko, 28, who said she had seen the 1997 movie “Titanic” perhaps a dozen times, instantly loved Ms O’Brien’s dramatic retelling of the disaster and its aftermath. But when she was piqued by curiosity about her unknown author and typed “Kate Alcott” into Google, nothing significant popped up.
“I guess I hadn’t really thought about the possibility that she might be working under a pen name,” Ms. Danaczko said. “I was operating under the assumption that she was somebody Esther had pulled from the slush pile or was an old friend.”