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Raven Leilani Editor Conversation

Join us on Tuesday, August 11 at 7:00pm on Zoom for a conversation with Raven Leilani, author of our August First Editions Club selection Luster, and Jenna Johnson, Executive Editor atFarrar, Straus and Giroux.

You can join the webinar on Zoom here. Questions about joining a Zoom event? Please email events@odysseybks.com.

About the Book

No one wants what no one wants.
And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we’re ready to take it?

Edie is stumbling her way through her twentiessharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriagewith rules.

As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home—though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.

Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani’s Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life—her hunger, her anger—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 Panelists

Raven Leilani’s work has been published in GrantaThe Yale ReviewMcSweeney’s Quarterly ConcernConjunctionsThe Cut, and New England Review, among other publications. Leilani received her MFA from NYU and was an Axinn Foundation Writer-in-Residence. Luster is her first novel.

Jenna Johnson is an Executive Editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and publishes a range of award-winning and bestselling fiction and nonfiction. She has had the joy of working with Angela Flournoy, Justin Torres, Ling Ma, Samantha Hunt, Sarah Moss, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, and many other wildly talented writers.

Join the Meeting

Join the webinar at: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84246412533. No registration required.

Get Your Copy

Order a *signed* copy of Luster below!

Event date: 
Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - 7:00pm
Event address: 
Luster: A Novel By Raven Leilani Cover Image
$26.00
ISBN: 9780374194321
Availability: Not in Stock - Hard to Find
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - August 4th, 2020

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