Name: Emily Austin: Is This a Cry For Help?
Start: 2026-01-12T18:30:00-05:00
End: 2026-01-12T19:30:00-05:00
Location: Frederick Book Arts Center

Join us at Frederick Book Arts Center on Monday, January 12 from 6:30-7:30 pm for a delightful evening with bestselling author Emily Austin! We’ll be celebrating her latest release, Is This a Cry For Help?, a day early! Emily will be in-conversation with local author Andie Burke. This story is about a librarian who, after experiencing a mental breakdown, returns to work just as her community’s frustrations over book bans reaches its boiling point. Following her talk, Emily will answer questions and sign books. Copies of Is This a Cry For Help? will be available for purchase at the event.
Location: Frederick Book Arts Center (127 S Carroll St, Frederick, MD 21701)
This event is free and open to the public. For accessibility requests, email [email protected] at least two (2) weeks prior to the event.
About the book: The bestselling “queen of darkly quirky, endearingly flawed heroines” (Sarah Haywood, author of The Cactus), returns with a luminous new novel following a librarian who comes back to work after a mental breakdown only to confront book-banning crusaders in an empowering story of grief, love, and the power of libraries.
Darcy’s life turned out better than she could have ever imagined. She is a librarian at the local branch, while her wife Joy runs a book binding service. Between the two of them, there is no more room on their shelves with their ample book collections, various knickknacks and bobbles, and dried bouquets. Rounding out their ideal life is two cats and a sun-soaked house by the lake.
But when Darcy receives the news that her ex-boyfriend, Ben, has passed away, she spirals into a pit of guilt and regret, resulting in a mental breakdown and medical leave from the library. When she returns to work, she is met by unrest in her community and protests surrounding intellectual freedom, resulting in a call for book bans and a second look at the branch’s upcoming DEI programs.
Through the support of her community, colleagues, and the personal growth that results from examining her previous relationships, Darcy comes into her own agency and the truest version of herself. Is This a Cry for Help? not only offers a moving portrait of queer life after coming of age but also powerfully explores questions about sexuality, community, and the importance of libraries.
About the author: Emily Austin is the author of We Could Be Rats, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Interesting Facts About Space, and the poetry collection Gay Girl Prayers. She was born in Ontario, Canada, and received two writing grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts. She studied English literature and library science at Western University. She currently lives in Ottawa, in the territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
About the moderator: Andie Burke specializes in big-hearted queer romcoms that kick-off with meet-disasters rather than meet-cutes. When not writing, she works as a pediatric radiology nurse. She lives with two small but hilarious humans in a Maryland home filled with an alarming number of books, ultra-fine point pens, and dehydrated houseplants. She is the author of Fall for Him as well as Fly with Me, one of Autostraddle’s Best Queer Books of the Year.