Raven Leilani launches LUSTER at Librairie Saint-Henri Books
Raven Leilani launches her debut novel, Luster, with Librairie Saint-Henri Books in an online talk and Q&A with LSHB Events Coordinator Sruti Islam.
Buy a ticket to reserve a spot in our live-streamed conversation with the author of one of this year’s most exciting debuts! The online event will take place August 21st at 7PM—a url will be provided closer to the launch date and sent to your email.
For every $10.00 ticket sold you are entered for a chance to win an exclusive, specially printed LSHB designed poster as well as a copy of the book!
*All ticket sales for this event are to be donated to the Montreal women’s shelter, Chez Doris*
ABOUT THE BOOK: Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties–sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She’s also, secretly, haltingly, figuring her way into life as an artist. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage–with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and falling into Eric’s family life, his home. She becomes a hesitant friend to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie is the only black woman who young Akila knows.Razor sharp, darkly comic, sexually charged, socially disruptive, Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: RAVEN LEILANI’s work has been published in Granta, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Narrative, Yale Review, Conjunctions, The Cut and New England Review, among other publications. She won Narrative’s Ninth Annual Poetry Contest and the Matt Clark Editor’s Choice Prize, as well as short fiction prizes from Bat City Review and Blue Earth Review. Luster is her first novel.