Hot Girls with Balls: A Novel

Please join BENEDICT NGUYỄN and SOLEIL HO at Clio's on Monday, August 11th, to discuss Benedict's new novel, Hot Girls With Balls.

In this outrageous and deeply serious satire, two star indoor volleyball players juggle unspoken jealousies in their off-court romance ahead of their rival teams’ first rematch in a year.

Scheming to rejoin the starting lineup, Six is 6’7” and barely checks her phone. Green is 6’1”, always building her brand, and secretly jealous of her more famous girlfriend. They’re gutsy, gorgeous babes going where no Asian American trans woman has gone before: the men’s pro indoor volleyball league. Six and Green are . . . hot girls with balls.

In between their rival teams’ away games across the globe, they stay connected on SpaceTime and selflessly broadcast their romance to fans on their weekly Instagraph live show. After a long season, they’ll finally reunite for the championship tournament, the first to accommodate in-person fans since the COVIS pandemic struck the world a year ago. Just as they enter an airtight bro bubble of the world’s best, they’re faced with a crisis that demands an indisputably humiliating task: make a public statement online.

Can Green stock up enough clout for her post-ball future? Can Six girlboss her team’s seniority politics? Can they both take a time-out to grieve? Their rabid fans and horny haters await their next move. We’re all just desperate for a whiff of the sweaty feminine energy that makes that ball thwack with such spectacular force.

BENEDICT NGUYỄN is a dancer and gym regular. Between pistol squats and muscle-ups, she works as a creative producer in live performance. She’s written for The Baf ler, BOMB, Los Angeles Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The Brooklyn Rail, The Margins, and other publications. In 2022, she published nasty notes, the redacted email zine on freelance labor. Hot Girls with Balls is her first novel.

SOLEIL HO (they/them) is a cultural critic and a cofounder of COYOTE, a worker-owned digital news outlet for the Bay Area.

Event Venue

Clio's, 353 Grand Avenue, Oakland, United States