A celebration of an extraordinary new book.
Please join us on the 28th of July from 7pm to celebrate the publication of Open Throat - a bizarre, ambitious, and wildly compelling story about a queer, melancholic, and dangerously hungry mountain lion who stalks the drought-devastated hills of Los Angeles.
Open Throat is the fifth book by Henry Hoke, who will be visiting the U.K. from his home in New York. Henry will be joined and interviewed by Jeremy Atherton Lin, essayist and author of the sensationally good Gay Bar.
About Open Throat:
Lonely and confused by the voices around them, a lion spends their days protecting a nearby homeless encampment, observing obnoxious hikers as they complain about their trauma and, in quiet moments, grappling with the complexities of their own identity.
When a man-made fire engulfs the encampment the lion is forced from the hills down into the city. As they confront a carousel of temptations and threats, they take us on a tour that spans the cruel inequalities of Los Angeles.
But even when salvation finally seems within reach, they are forced to face down the ultimate question: do they want to eat a person, or become one?
About Henry:
Henry Hoke is an editor at The Offing and a writer whose work has appeared in No Tokens, Triangle House, Electric Literature, and the flash noir anthology Tiny Crimes. He co-created the performance series Enter>text in Los Angeles, and has taught at CalArts and the UVA Young Writers Workshop. He lives in New York City.
About Jeremy:
Jeremy Atherton Lin is an Asian-American essayist based in Los Angeles and East Sussex, England. His debut book Gay Bar (2021) received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography and was named a pick of the year by critics at the New York Times, NPR, Artforum, Spin and Vogue. Jeremy has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, Frieze, GQ, Granta, and The Yale Review, from which his work was anthologised in Best American Magazine Writing 2022, among others.
Copies of Open Throat will be available to purchase on the night. This event is free to attend. Please note that this event will take place in our downstairs event space, which unfortunately is not currently wheelchair accessible. If you have accessibility issues please email us at books@commonpress.co.uk, and we can discuss your specific needs.
