First Novel Friday: Hot Girls with Balls, Gingko Season, and Lonely Crowds

On the first Friday of the month, join us as we celebrate and launch a selection of the best debut novels published today. Be among the first to discover boundary-pushing and world-expanding work from exciting new voices in fiction.

Kick off the weekend with a happy hour at our cash bar for ticket holders in our Members Lounge starting at 6pm. Then, at 7pm, we’ll move to our auditorium for readings from the featured debut novelists, followed by a short moderated conversation. The party continues with book signings and signature cocktails to round out the night. Go home with something new—a book, a friend, a favorite Friday night tradition.

This month’s novels feature characters searching for a sense of self and place in the world while being pulled in many directions. Torrey Peters, author of the PEN/Hemingway Award-winning novel Detransition, Baby, will moderate. We hope you will support our featured debut novelists by purchasing their books at the event (purchase all three for 15% off). Space is limited, so reserve your spot today!

We offer two in-person ticket options: the $5 Community Ticket and the $15+ Supporter Ticket. Both provide the same access, but if you’re able, we kindly suggest registering for the Supporter Ticket to help sustain our programs for emerging writers.

August’s Featured Debuts:

Gingko Season by Naomi Xu Elegant
After suffering her first big heartbreak two years earlier, Penelope Lin has built a quiet life with no romantic entanglements. She spends her days cataloging a museum’s vast collection of Qing Dynasty bound-foot shoes and in the comfortable company of close friends. One day, she happens to meet Hoang, who confesses to releasing mice from the cancer research lab where he works. Hoang’s openness catches Penelope off guard; from then on, she finds her carefully constructed life slowly starting to unravel. Told in Penelope’s witty, vulnerable, and thoroughly endearing voice, Ginkgo Season captures three seasons of reawakening, challenges, and transformation.

Hot Girls with Balls by Benedict Nguyễn
Six is 6′7″, scheming to rejoin the starting lineup, and barely checks her phone. Green is 6′1″, always building her brand, and secretly jealous of her more famous girlfriend. Together, they’re going where no Asian American trans woman has gone before: the men’s pro indoor volleyball league. In this outrageous and deeply serious satire, two star indoor volleyball players juggle unspoken jealousies in their off-court romance ahead of their rival teams’ first rematch in a year. Can Green stock up enough clout for her post-ball future? Can Six girlboss her team’s seniority politics? Can they both take a time-out to just grieve? Their rabid fans and horny haters await their next move.

Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu
While Maria, charismatic and aware of her ability to influence others, eases into her full self, embracing her sexuality and her desire to be an artist, Ruth is mostly content to follow her around. There, ambition and competition threaten to rupture their friendship, while strong and unspoken forces pull them together over the years. Whereas Maria finds early success in New York City as an artist, Ruth stumbles along the fringes of the art world, pulled toward a quieter life of work and marriage. As their lives converge and diverge, they meet in one final and fateful confrontation. Ruth and Maria’s decades-long friendship interrogates the nature of intimacy, desire, class, and time. What does it mean to be an artist and to be true to oneself? What does it mean to give up on an obsession?