A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton

Join us for an exciting event on Thursday, April 10th with Jeanne Thornton to celebrate the release of A/S/L. For this event, Jeanne will be joined in conversation by Vera Blossom!

Please note: This event is free to attend, but registration is required. Our in-store events are mask-required.

A transformational, transformative story about video games, three queer friends, and the code(s) they learn to survive, from the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Trans Fiction
1998: Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa are teenagers, scattered across the country but joined by the Internet as they create Saga of the Sorceress, a video game that will change everything, if only for the three of them.
Eighteen years later, Saga of the Sorceress still exists only on the scattered drives of its creators. Lilith works as a loan underwriter at a rinky-dink bank in Manhattan, a trans woman in a very cis world. Sash is in Brooklyn, working as a part-time webcam dominatrix. Neither knows that the other is in New York, or that Abraxa is just across the Hudson River, sleeping on the floor of a friend’s Jersey City home after a disaster at sea. They have never met in person and have been out of touch for years, but none have forgotten the sorceress or her unfinished quest.
Weaving together the technologies of two decades, and a healthy dose of magic, A/S/L is a novel that queers our notions of nostalgia, friendship, and even the possibilities of fiction itself, confirming Jeanne Thornton as one of our best and most ambitious novelists.

Jeanne Thornton is the author of Summer Fun, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction and finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction, as well as The Black Emerald and The Dream of Doctor Bantam. Her fiction has appeared in n+1, WIRED, Evergreen Review, and other places. She is an editor at Feminist Press, as well as copublisher of Instar Books and coeditor of the Ignatz Award–winning We’re Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology. She lives in Brooklyn, and more information is available at jeannethornton.com.

Vera Blossom is a proud Filipina American and transfemme monster. Her work explores desire, pleasure, gender, and death. She writes the steamy, confessional newsletter How to Fuck Like a Girl, and cofounded Snack Report, a food blog focused on rituals, feelings, and friendship. In 2021, she helped produce Black Mountain Radio, an artist-driven audio project published in collaboration with Black Mountain Institute and the Believer magazine. In 2022, she was associate producer on season 2 of The Anti-Trans Hate Machine, which focused on the disinformation ecosystem constructed by the Christian Nationalist movement. In 2023, she was selected as an Ann Friedman Weekly Fellow and a PEN America Emerging Voice.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email [email protected].

Event Venue

Women & Children First, 5233 North Clark Street, Chicago, United States