a b o u t
Slut Lullabies is beautiful, daring, triumphant. Gina's writing is fearless and original and kind and there simply aren't enough books like this.
— Stephen Elliott, The Adderall Diaries
Following her debut novel, My Sister’s Continent, which delved “fearlessly into questions of identity, abuse…trust, trespass, and delusion” (Booklist), Gina Frangello continues her exploration of the power dynamics of gender, class, and sexuality in this collection of diverse, vibrant short fiction. Slut Lullabies is unsettling. Like the experience of reading a private diary, these stories leave one feeling slightly traitorous while also imprinting a deep recognition of truths you did not know you felt.
It is through beauty, horror, humor and chaos that Frangello has managed to pull these ten stories out of her deep understanding of 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 precocious girl 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 his naive girlfriend at home; and a socialite must confront her dark past as her husband’s deterioration from Huntington’s Disease destroys both her bank account and social standing.
Each insightfully drawn, deeply felt character moves delicately amid the despair and wreckage of ordinary life, but always towards hope. And Frangello’s oddly uplifting voice acts as the unifying thread, drawing out a beauty and dimension which demands both our criticism and our empathy.
"Savvy, sexy, blunt stories that keep inviting a reader in. Frangello's voice
feels like a friend you've known for years, telling you stories with warmth and
insight."
— Aimee Bender, Willful Creatures and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
“Gina Frangello is unafraid to look hard at the dark side of human nature, but she writes with such compassion and humor that we come away from these fictions with new insight into the strange world we all live in. You lift your head from this book dazed and blinking in new light. These are jaw-dropping stories.”
— Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply
“Slut Lullabies is daring short fiction at its
finest; it explores the full range of modern
life—from love to sex to illness to family—with
all the refinement and frankness of Anaïs Nin.
If you have any question about the future of
the short story, this beguiling collection is its
formidable answer.”
— Joe Meno, The Great Perhaps
“Frangello writes with great wit and pathos about a remarkable range of human dynamics. Slut
Lullabies dazzles and surprises with its scope and invention.”
— Jonathan Evison, All About Lulu
“Simply put, Gina Frangello is a fearless
writer, unafraid to show us the raw and
real ways we deal with each other, and
with ourselves, and the stories in Slut
Lullabies are no exception. Her richly
developed characters are alive and
breathing in these beautiful, sometimes
brutal stories, and her powers of
observation about the human psyche are
alarmingly dead on.”
— Elizabeth Crane, You Must Be This Happy to Enter
ORDER
June 2010 (U.S. release) / trade paper / ISBN 978-0-9753623-7-2 / 6" x 9" / 184 pages / Short Fiction / $15.00 (U.S.) / editor: Bryan Tomasovich / book design: Stephanie Lucero / cover art: Susan Aurinko / drawings: Crystal Fosnaugh / website: Kymberlee della Luce
Available at Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell’s, Indiebound, and more.
ABOUT EMERGENCY PRESS
Emergency Press is based in New York and publishes explorative books of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and emergent forms that fall outside traditional categories. Every year, the press hosts an international contest for book-length examinations of a single topic. EP books are carried by major distributors and wholesalers, and available in bookstores across the nation and through major online booksellers.
CONTACT
Bryan Tomasovich
Emergency Press
154 W. 27th Street
#5W
New York NY 10001
206 331 7477
[email protected]
www.emergencypress.org
