All She Wrote Books Presents: THE DINNER PARTY Book Launch [05/28/26]

Join us at All She Wrote Books as we celebrate the release of The Dinner Party by Cat Fitzpatrick on Thursday, May 28th at 7:00 pm featuring the author in conversation with author Andrea Lawlor, as they discuss Cat's post-pandemic follow-up to her debut verse novel of present-day manners, The Call-Out—a trans community celebration of mores, gender theory, and rhyme.

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About the Book

Cat Fitzpatrick delights in this post-pandemic follow-up to her debut verse novel of present-day manners, The Call-Out—

a trans community celebration of mores, gender theory, and rhyme.

The Dinner Party returns to the chaotic and adorable world of trans femme. The title piece begins… “The ‘Rona being now at last abated,” and continues with cameo portraits of the seven guests she plans to invite, including:

Together, as we had in days gone by.

I asked Rakshasi, clad in black, so thin,

So eager for some trouble to get in,

Of any kind, and Sophie, blunt and dry,

Who often ended up the night so pissed

She’d trip and fall when climbing up the stairs,

And learned Bridget, sweet, beset by cares,

Who always talks about her therapist ––

My besties. Plus I asked along a pair

Of mascs: Adonis, such a charming youth,

More interested in beauty than in truth

Who drives a motorbike and braids his hair,

And Dominic, less young, but full of poise,

A trickster with a most provoking grin,

More pleased with contradiction than with sin,

And even more with argument than boys,

Joining “The Dinner Party” are several other themed pieces, including “A Stay in the Country,” a short arcadian pageant, “Baby Book,” about the trials and tribulations of making babies as queer and transsexual couples, “Letter to Crabstick,” an epistolatory friendship, and “Uxorious Sonnets,” a collection of eight love poems, among them Sonnet 6 in which she writes:

it’s almost terrifying when we fuck

how there I am, how in that jostle and shove

of flesh, my thoughts, that mostly run amuck,

contract to simply shouting Love You Love.

About the Author

Cat Fitzpatrick is the Editrix at LittlePuss Press and teaches at Rutgers University—Newark.

Her novel-in-rhyme The Call-Out won the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction. She has also published a collection of poems, Glamourpuss, and co-edited the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction & Fantasy from Transgender Writers, which won the 2018 ALA Stonewall Barbara Gittings Award for Literature. Her next book, The Dinner Party: A Book About Love is due out from Seven Stories Press in May.

About the In-conversation Partner

Andrea Lawlor is the author of two chapbooks, Position Papers (Factory Hollow Press, 2016), and Position Papers (Belladonna*, 2024), as well as a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Rescue Press, 2017; Vintage, 2019; Picador UK, 2019). Their stories, essays, and poems have appeared in publications such as Ploughshares, The Brooklyn Rail, jubilat, and The New York Times. They are the recipient of a Whiting Award for Fiction and the Prix Sade, as well as fellowships from Lambda Literary, Radar Labs, the Ucross Foundation, and Macdowell. They are an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Mount Holyoke College, and live in Western Massachusetts.

All She Wrote Books Presents: THE DINNER PARTY Book Launch

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All She Wrote Books Presents: THE DINNER PARTY Book Launch

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