Join us to celebrate the release of Emily Zhou's debut story collection GIRLFRIENDS in conversation with local author Winona Meridian Marks!

In seven light-filled prisms of short stories, Emily Zhou chronicles modern queer life with uncompromising and hilarious lucidity. Attending to the intimacy of Gen Z women’s lives, these stories move from the provinces to the metropolis, from chaotic student accommodation to insecure jobs, from parties to dates to the nights after, from haplessness to some kind of power.

Funny and devastating, like a trans Mary McCarthy, Zhou depicts with shocking precision the choices and shifts through which we work on each other and ourselves. Tender, merciless, and gracious, Girlfriends is a breath of fresh air.

Emily will read aloud from her work, answer questions, and sign copies!

About the authors:

Emily Zhou was born in Michigan and lives in New York. Girlfriends is her first book.

Winona Meridian Marks escaped from Mississippi in 2012 and has lived in DC since 2018. Her first book is still working on her.

Preorder the book here: https://shop.lostcitybookstore.com/book/9781736716847

More about Girlfriends:

“Girlfriends sounds a loud bell announcing the change of guard: a generational arrival. Here is a writer who can scrap with the likes of Ann Beattie or Richard Ford but attends parties to which those boomers (or for that matter, we millennials) would never get invited.”

—Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

“Soaked in melancholy and the easy rhythm of café hangs, ad hoc photoshoots, and cutting remarks, these seven sharply observed stories navigate identities, fraying relationships, and the parties and mores of today's transsexual demimonde. Here Emily Zhou comes fully into her own terrifying powers: a writer to watch, just as she's watching all of us.”

—Jeanne Thornton, author of Summer Fun

“Tender, incisive portraits of trans womanhood, the ties that bind women to one another, and the complex relationships of youth. Simultaneously aligned with queer coming-of-age story collections of previous generations and dexterously subverting and revitalizing the genre, these seven stories offer a glimpse into the future of queer literature...this bright writer is leading the way.”

—Kirkus

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/emily-zhou/girlfriends-zhou/.

***

Accessibility note: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator.