A joint event celebrating the new editions of their work, released through Northwestern University Press and Triquarterly!About this Event
We are very excited to welcome Gina Frangello & Elizabeth Crane for a joint event celebrating the new editions of their work, released through Northwestern University Press and Triquarterly! They will be joined in conversation by Megan Stielstra.
Slut Lullabies: Through beauty, horror, humor, and chaos, Gina Frangello’s electric stories mine the human experience. A gay Latino man whose pious relatives are boycotting his commitment ceremony becomes caught up in hypocrisy and splendor when his lover’s Waspy mother hires a glitzy wedding coordinator. A desperate teen “seduces” her teacher in order to blackmail him into funding her young stepmother’s escape from their violent home. A wife turns to infidelity and drugs to distract her from chronic pain following an accident. A teenage boy attempts atonement in Amsterdam after having exploited and betrayed his naive girlfriend at home. A socialite must confront her dark past as her husband’s deteriorating illness erodes both her bank account and social standing.
Intimate and raw, this new edition of Frangello’s short fiction includes two previously unpublished stories. A foreword by Rebecca Makkai explains how Frangello’s incendiary work has opened the door for writing about deeply flawed and fascinating women.
My Sister's Continent: Kirby is a young woman attempting to come to terms with a failed bout of therapy and the truth about her identical twin, Kendra. Since girlhood, Kirby both idolized and envied Kendra, a fearless and charismatic ballet dancer who commanded the attention of everyone in their orbit. In the aftermath of tragedy, Kirby is sent a case study by a former psychiatrist intent on publishing a distorted version of her family’s secrets. She responds by using Kendra’s private and revealing journals to reconstruct their final months together, as well as her own “disastrous” time in therapy, to voice her own truth.
Freud’s “Dora,” a young woman whose mysterious symptoms he contentiously chalked up to “hysteria,” appears at turns in the faces of each twin as they navigate a world of sexuality, familial dysfunction, and possibly-psychosomatic ailments. Reissued with a new foreword by Lidia Yuknavitch, Frangello’s groundbreaking early novel brings “Dora” into a new era.
GINA FRANGELLO is the author of six books, including the memoir Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason, which was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and the novels A Life in Men and My Sister’s Continent (Northwestern University Press).
That May Not Mean What You Think: Throughout her body of work, Elizabeth Crane’s literary vision has always been singular and innovative, twisting form and bending reality into new universes. Her latest collection, That May Not Mean What You Think, explores themes of aging and youth, gender and discrimination, and sex and love. In “Training Module,” Crane takes the structure and protocol of workplace harassment prevention training and turns it on its head; “The Box” tells the story of a woman trying to recover from divorce with the help of a literal unicorn; and “The Youngs” follows a group of teenagers experiencing loss for the first time, clinging to the belief that they’ll live forever. Across these delightfully weird and disarmingly truthful stories, American culture is refracted through humor and heart, asking readers to consider their complicity and to imagine new possibilities of participating in a better future.
When the Messenger Is Hot: Hailed as “revolutionary fiction,” When the Messenger Is Hot gleefully upends the short-story form, rendering the absurdities and possibilities of modern urban life with disarming humor and keen perception as Crane weaves through grief and womanhood. The women in Elizabeth Crane’s world are fierce and kind, damaged and optimistic. They are jilted lovers, absent daughters, twelve-steppers, and smart-asses, recovering from loss, addiction, or betrayal. From a woman who decides to live on the rooftop of her friend’s apartment (why not?), to a writer whose identity is compromised by the actress who portrays her, to a daughter who believes her deceased mother is still alive and living at the bus depot, these characters experience love and loss in a way that is both profoundly universal and uniquely theirs.
ELIZABETH CRANE is the author of the memoir This Story Will Change and six works of fiction, including the story collection Turf and the novel The History of Great Things. Her stories have been translated into several languages and have appeared in numerous publications, including Catapult, Electric Literature, and Literary Hub. Her work is performed regularly as part of NPR’s Selected Shorts and has been adapted for film and stage, most notably with Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. She teaches in the low-residency MFA program at the University of California, Riverside–Palm Desert.
Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are strongly encouraged. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you need a seat reserved for you for accessibility, please email [email protected] To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For scholarship tickets or other access needs please email .
Event Venue
Women & Children First, 5233 North Clark Street, Chicago, United States
USD 0.00
