The Final Form

Housemates is out in paperback & I have feelings

Main Meal

Hello friend,

I hope this finds you resting.

Usually this is a place where I write about things like the delights and fatphobias of Miranda July’s All Fours, how the Jewish American Princess is not OK, and why summer is the best time to investigate your relationship with your body, as well as sharing tidbits about books & media I’m obsessed with and important resistance efforts to support in Philly and beyond. But today I’m doing something a little selfish — I’m celebrating my novel Housemates, which assumes her final form, aka comes out in paperback, on Tuesday.

I've been floored by how deeply readers have connected with Bernie and Leah and their older narrator, and by how much they've responded to the depictions of Philly queer group houses and joyful fat bodies and the big film camera Bernie uses. But it’s fascinating, the most consistent thing I keep hearing again and again, is that reading Housemates made people want to make art of their own. It made me want to paint again, one person told me; it made me want to take up pottery said another; and from no less than eleven people who read it: since I finished your book, I’ve been working on my novel. This is wild to me and fills me up with—what? Awe? Pride? Hope? All those things.

Housemates was born out of a longing to live in a place where art still mattered. I wrote it during lockdown in 2020 and then through the waxing and waning of COVID in 2021-2023 to keep myself alive and, I think, to help myself answer the question: what is the actual point of doing this, of writing books and making art when people are dying and others are being stripped of basic rights? In this moment of continuing genocide in Gaza and the decimating of the resources necessary to make art (hello NEA grants being illegally rescinded to comply with imaginary shifts in “priorities”) this question feels, sadly, more relevant than ever.

Thinking about writing a novel as building a physical place is language I started using because of smart friend and genius novelist

Patrick Nathan

. I taught a class recently about how you start writing fiction when you’ve never written it before and I asked a few novelists I respect, including Patrick, to answer the following question: How did you write your novel when it can feel so weird, unproductive, or uncomfortable to write fiction?

Here is Patrick’s reply:

“It’s the one place,” he added, “that’s giving you something you can’t get anywhere else.”

Damn! I did play while writing Housemates, and I did rest. I liked writing the group house scenes and poking gentle fun at the way queer communities, in our hope for a better world, can end up constructing and enforcing rigid systems of thought. I had fun writing the road trip parts where Bernie and Leah go to Dairy Queen and turn their blizzards upside down! I had fun and got turned on writing the sex scenes — mmm. I had fun, weirdly, writing about the question of why the official spaces where art is taught are rife with thorny grey areas and bizarre identity-based comments that can forever change how we see ourselves and others. I had fun writing Philadelphia, my home city, and a city I rarely see depicted in literary fiction (though, changing!).

Unless you work in the weird world of book publishing, it may also make no sense why most books are published in hardback first, and then usually about a year later, published in paperback. The answer is, basically, money—publishers make more of it per copy sold on a hardback ($30) versus a paperback ($18). But to me, a book’s real life is in paperback. Paperbacks are what last, and they are the object that I most enjoy holding. I dunno, I just love bending back their smooth covers or sticking one in my fanny pack as I mosey out for the day. They’re better on beaches and by pools and in the bath with a cold little seltzer.

I personally often wait to buy books until they are out in paperback mostly because they are cheaper, but also because I’m waiting to see — what will that book look like in its final form? Publishers often use the time that a book is out in hardcover to “test” its packaging; if you see a book get a totally different cover for paperback that often means a publisher isn’t convinced that the original cover and words on the flaps struck the right note or reached the right readers and they want to take a second crack. Other times, like in Housemates’ case, they just want to fine tune the colors, switch up the words on the cover with praise the book secured since it was published, or give it a slight aesthetic refresh. I love my paperback’s new vibe — hand drawn row houses instead of photographed ones; bright yellow text instead of black for a little POP.

Here are a few ways to get your paws on the Housemates paperback or just to support her long term life:

• Buy her from your local bookstore. Or from Bookshop.org, which ships quickly nationwide.

• If you want a signed copy, buy her from queer woman-owned Pocket Books in Lancaster, PA and they will ship it to you anywhere in the U.S.

• Request her from your local library. Helps libraries in general TBH

• Come out to an event! The Philly one is sold out, but check out the “Toppings” section below for a special way to grab a ticket.

• I’ll be talking to so many amazing folks about Housemates and queer novels more broadly in Pittsburgh, Ardmore, Philly, Jenkintown, and Brooklyn (Center for Fiction, Books Are Magic, and Tables of Contents). All details and to RSVP are here.

A place to play, a place to rest, a place to exist—this is what writing Housemates gave me. It’s my sincerest hope that it might give that to you, too.

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Toppings

• Why have I been re-watching Younger, the completely unnecessary Darren Star show about a glitzy, white-washed, and deranged version of the book publishing industry? Could it be mostly for Diana Trout, finicky and fashionable (?) head of marketing who begins a romance with Enzo DeLuca, a brave and hunky plumber? Could it be because we were moving and all of our things were in boxes or on the floor and I needed comfort? Either, both.

• I’ve been reading: Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine, a very delightful and funny and sexy book of fiction about “the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan.” It’s short stories, but if you liked Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection or Bryan Washington’s Lot, it’s a book that works similarly — all the characters live close to each other, could bump into each other at the grocery store, etc. Also listening to the audiobooks of Annie Bot (a sentient sex robot comes alive) and Woodworking (a South Dakota teacher who is a trans woman befriends her student, also a trans woman).

• I’ve been clicking: this link to tell my reps to fight the elimination of gender affirming care under Medicaid and this link to donate to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

• I want to plug: Broad Street Review, “Philly’s most comprehensive independent arts and culture outlet,” is celebrating their annual Book Week (June 1-7) with a virtual panel event featuring five Philly authors: Elise Juska (Reunion), John Morrison (Boyz II Men 40th Anniversary Celebration), Tre Johnson (Black Genius: Essays on an American Legacy), Annie Liontas (Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery), and Eric Smith (With or Without You). Zoom, Wednesday, June 4 at 6:30pm ET. If you enter their IG giveaway, you can win a ticket to the sold out Queer Novels Now event on June 6 in Philly.

• I’m teaching: an 8! Day! Retreat! in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in October for people who want support to dive into a fiction project or just a stretch of time to focus on writing and be in a beautiful place. Family-owned villa, trip to hot springs, queer friendly & body neutral—no diet talk! More info is here.

• HAPPY PRIDE! Drink water!!

xx
Emma

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