Little Rabbit: Alyssa Songsiridej's novel of lust, punishment & artistic drive
Featured Speakers
Alyssa Songsiridej & Jess Brough
We're excited to host this online launch for Alyssa Songsiridej's book Little Rabbit, a wholly new kind of coming-of-age story about lust, punishment, artistic drive and desires that defy the hard-won boundaries of the self.
What a hypnotic, sexy, smart, unputdownable book! It delves into so many of my favorite subjects: erotic obsession, art, friendship, and the slippery and surprising nature of selfhood --Melissa Febos, author of GIRLHOOD
When she first meets the choreographer at an artists’ residency, they don’t hit it off. She finds him loud, conceited, domineering. He thinks her serious, guarded, too precious about her work. But when he invites her to watch his dance company perform, something shifts.Their interaction at the show sets off a summer of expanding sexual boundaries. Over weekends sequestered at his summer house in upstate New York, her body learns to obediently follow his, and his desires quickly become inextricable from her pleasure – and her pain.
Back in Boston, her roommate’s concern amplifies her own doubts about these heady weekend retreats.
What does it mean for a young, queer woman to be with an older man? For a fledgling artist to attach herself to an established one? Is she following her own agency, or is she merely following him?And does falling in love have to mean eviscerating yourself?
A deeply empathetic and horny novel - a love letter to bottoming and being an artist and following yourself to the end of everything --Carmen Maria Machado, author of IN THE DREAM HOUSE
About our speaker: Alyssa Songsiridej is an editor at Electric Literature. Her fiction has appeared in StoryQuarterly, the Indiana Review, The Offing, and Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, and has been supported by Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, the Ragdale Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the VCCA and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Little Rabbit is her first novel. A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, she lives in Philadelphia.
