My Dead Book - Nate Lippens in conversation with Olivia Laing

Nate Lippens in conversation with Olivia Laing

A digital book launch hosted by Gay's the Word on zoom.

Tuesday July 12th, 7pm BST - Tickets FREE

Topic: MY DEAD BOOK LAUNCH EVENT: Nate Lippens & Olivia Laing

Join The Event Zoom Meeting: https://bit.ly/3nUyW6z

My Dead Book is published by Pilot Press

My Dead Book is a novel composed of nonlinear vignettes and fragments about a queer man approaching his fiftieth birthday who is haunted by insomnia and his past. In the dead of night, he remembers his friends who died in the late 1980s and 1990s, his years as a teenage throwaway and sex worker, and ruminates on working class survival, queer aging, AIDS, and whether he has outlived his place in the world.

Cover image by Jimmy DeSana, courtesy Jimmy DeSana Trust

Praise

"What a blistering book—with My Dead Book, Nate Lippens has created something truly fucking great. It's as if the storied stars of Lou Reed's 'Walk on the Wild Side' overshot Manhattan and wound up in Wisconsin, broke and blue with cold and depressed beyond belief by the thought that this nowhere is now home. It's a bitter pill, but I love bitterness, and who doesn't love pills?" — Derek McCormack

“There’s no doubt to this book. You’d think that was a flaw but it’s been burned away. My Dead Book is not short though it is brief. It’s loving, bittersweet, and actually courageous because it tells a story that is slightly unbearable because it’s all secret, awful hard bad secrets and funny as hell. Nate’s balancing act works because the heart of it (this novel) is true even though it’s often heartless. It’s simple. He knows what things are worth. When you need the sea or a bird they’re there like they never were before.” — Eileen Myles

“This book by Nate Lippens is really moving and beautifully written. Not one superfluous sentence. It’s razor tight. The phantom limbs of what has been excised remains. But still there is so much love and sadness and all the randomness of what makes a life, and who you meet along the way. My ghosts are summoned by his ghosts.” — Hedi El Kholti

Nate Lippens is a writer from Wisconsin. His fiction has appeared in the anthologies Little Birds (Filthy Loot, 2021), Responses to Derek Jarman’s Blue (Pilot Press, 2022), and Pathetic Literature, edited by Eileen Myles (Grove, 2022). My Dead Book is his first novel.

@NateLippens

Image credit: Sophie Davidson

Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic. She’s the author of six books, including To the River (2011), The Trip to Echo Spring (2013), The Lonely City (2016), Crudo (2017), Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency (2020) and Everybody: A Book About Freedom (2021). Laing is currently working on a book about gardens and paradise. She’s non-binary and pronoun fluid.

Book your FREE tickets now here on Eventbrite and in the run up to event day, Tuesday 12 July, we'll email you the zoom link.

Please note this event was originally going to take place on Thursday 7th July, but due to something unavoidable it has been necessary to reschedule. Everyone who booked initally has been refunded, and this event will now be FREE for all!