Edie, a 23-year-old publishing assistant, is having an affair with fortysomething Eric (who sweetly corrects her online typos).
Written in a high-voltage register, the novel takes gleeful delight in subverting literary expectations. Luster confronts racism, sexism and capitalism in a feverish blast of sex, smart observations and fury that owes as much to TV hits Girlsand Fleabag as to acclaimed literary contemporaries Sally Rooney and Ottessa Moshfegh. “Am I allowed to curse?” Leilani asks politely. Her brother died of a rare neuro-degenerative disease in September. In April, she lost her father to coronavirus. But while finally having her book “out in the world” has been “incredible and surreal”, it has also been a very difficult year. Like Edie, the artist protagonist of Luster, the author, now 30, had spent many years “doggedly practising her craft”, writing in betweenwhatever nine-to-five job she was doing to pay the rent, all the while updating a spreadsheet of rejection letters.
The novel has been “received in a way that I honestly couldn’t even hope for”, Leilani says from her Brooklyn apartment. Its publication in the UK this month has been heralded with interviews in glossy magazines, including Vogue. When it was published in the US a year later, last summer, it went straight on to the New York Times bestseller list and was given an admiring debut review in the New Yorker. Proceeds from the PEN America Authors’ Evenings support PEN America’s programming to secure the liberty of persecuted and imprisoned writers around the world, to defend freedom of expression, and to promote literature and international cultural exchange.A couple of months before graduating from New York University’s MFA fiction programme, Raven Leilani was in Zadie Smith’s class when she got a text from her agent saying that an offer had been made on her first novel, Luster. Please visit the Authors’ Evenings webpage for our full calendar of dinners. The PEN America Authors’ Evenings are nights of literary dinners in private homes and intimate settings. If you have any questions, please contact Christy Wensley at. Leilani’s debut novel, Luster has won multiple awards and Leilani has been recognized as an exciting new talent.įollowing your RSVP, you will be sent the address.Ī donation to attend is optional but appreciated. Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or melt into a languorous drip plot suddenly, wildly flying forward like a bike down a hill.” -Jazmine Hughes, The New York Times Book Review. This evening is being generously hosted by Cameron Forbes.Ī New York Times bestseller, Luster is “so delicious that it feels illicit. This promises to be a fascinating evening, and we hope that you will join us. Join us for an intimate evening with Raven Leilani discussing her novel, Luster.
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