Join us to celebrate the UK publication of two wonderful debuts! Grace Lavery’s Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis, and Lauren John Joseph’s At Certain Points We Touch!
Grace’s Please Miss is a riveting, genre-breaking memoir about recovering from addiction and gender transitioning unlike anything you’ve ever read, while Lauren’s coming-of-age novel about first love is nothing short of glorious, breathtaking and razor-sharp.
Grace and Lauren will be in conversation with Alison Rumfitt, in an evening that promises to be equal parts thrilling, fascinating, funny and touching.
About Please Miss:
Grace Lavery is a reformed druggie, an unreformed omnisexual chaos Muppet, and 100 percent, all-natural, synthetic female hormone monster. As soon as she solves her “penis problem,” she begins receiving anonymous letters, seemingly sent by a cult of sinister clowns, and sets out on a magical mystery tour to find the source of these surreal missives. Misadventures abound: Grace performs in a David Lynch remake of Sunset Boulevard and is reprogrammed as a sixties femmebot; she writes a Juggalo Ghostbusters prequel and a socialist manifesto disguised as a porn parody of QI. Or is it vice versa? As Grace fumbles toward a new trans identity, she tries on dozens of different voices, creating a coat of many colours.
With more dick jokes than a transsexual should be able to pull off, Please Miss gives us what we came for, then slaps us in the face and orders us to come again.
About At Certain Points We Touch:
It’s four in the morning, and our narrator is walking home from the club when they realise that it’s February 29th – the birthday of the man who was something like their first love. Piecing together art, letters and memory, they set about trying to write the story of a doomed affair that first sparked and burned a decade ago.
Ten years earlier, and our young narrator and a boy named Thomas James fall into bed with one another over the summer of their graduation. Their ensuing affair, with its violent, animal intensity and its intoxicating and toxic power play will initiate a dance of repulsion and attraction that will cross years, span continents, drag in countless victims – and culminate in terrible betrayal.
At Certain Points We Touch is a story of first love and last rites, conjured against a vivid backdrop of London, San Francisco and New York – a riotous, razor-sharp coming-of-age story that marks the arrival of an extraordinary new talent.
Praise for Grace:
‘Grace’s writing is laugh out loud funny, Please Miss refuses to be tied down by old tropes, and instead surprises us on every page.’ Travis Alabanza
‘This is the queer memoir you’ve been waiting for; a dizzying mix of theory and pastiche, metafiction and memory . . . hilarious and sexy and terrifying in its brilliance. But don’t worry – Lavery is an avalanche you’ll be glad to be buried under.’ Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
‘Reframes the question of transition from the familiar journey from A to B, and replaces that journey with a can’t-look-away performance of wit, language, irreverence, and delight so compelling that a reader forgets about destinations all together.’ Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
‘Blessedly twisted . . . supremely intelligent, innovative, and important.’ Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
‘Kaleidoscopic, magnetic, erudite, fierce, a raw nerve in a reverie, amped-up on desire and doubt, making trouble as if dared, dazzling like flames.’ Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay Bar
‘Maddening, snort-inducingly hilarious, perverted, and giving 0 f*cks, this is going to change the game. Buckle up baby!’ Lauren John Joseph, author of At Certain Points We Touch
Praise for Lauren:
‘A stone-cold masterpiece, which in its scope, frankness and ambition reminds me of The Line of Beauty, retooled for the 21st century. By turns libidinous, hilarious, melancholy and full of feeling, it reveals Lauren John Joseph as a shocking new talent.’ Olivia Laing, author of Funny Weather
'Lauren John Joseph writes with such wit, glamour, and style! I haven’t read a book that so powerfully evokes what it’s like to be a wild young artist among other wild young artists since the Bright Young Things were publishing.' Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
'Lauren's debut novel is so exciting. The writing is so fresh, funny and gripping - and carries the trademark wit that I have always loved from Lauren.' Travis Alabanza, author of Burgerz
'The struggle to find one's place in the world as an artist and lover, creating self and culture as you go along - At Certain Points We Touch captures this fleeting, dazzling moment with glamour and heart.' Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave
'At Certain Points We Touch is as much a love letter to the glamour and glory of countercultural nightlife as a self-aware sendup of its absurdities and deprivations. This novel is a rollicking study of the stubbornness, irrationality, and dysfunction of the human heart, with prose as extravagant and daring as a Rococo gown. I would spend as many pages with this narrator as Lauren John Joseph cares to write.' Kim Fu, author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
Doors open at 6.30pm and the event will begin at 7.00pm. Please have your ticket with you. Grace, Lauren, and Alison will be available to sign copies of their books afterwards in the bookshop.
About the Authors:
Grace Lavery is a British writer, editor and academic living in Brooklyn, NY. As an Associate Professor of English, Critical Theory, and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her research explores the history and theory of aesthetics and interpretation, with particular interests in psychoanalysis, literary realism, and queer and trans cultures.
Lauren John Joseph was born in Liverpool and lives in London, they write for the page, the stage and the screen. Their film and performance work has been shown internationally across the UK, US, Europe and Asia. They are the author of the plays Boy in a Dress and A Generous Lover, and the experimental prose volume Everything Must Go. This is their first novel.
Alison Rumfitt is a writer and semi-professional trans woman. Her debut pamphlet of poetry, The T(y)ranny, was a critical deconstruction of Margaret Atwood’s work through the lens of a trans woman navigating her own misogynistic dystopia. It was published by Zarf Editions in 2019. Tell Me I’m Worthless is her debut novel. Her work has appeared in countless publications such as SPORAZINE, datableed, The Final Girls, Burning House Press, SOFT CARTEL, Glass Poetry and more. Her poetry was nominated - twice! - for the Rhysling Award in 2018. You can find her on Twitter @hangsawoman and @alison.zone on Instagram. She loves her friends.