Night Beast by Ruth Joffre comes out today! It’s a debut collection of doomed love stories and twisted fairytales explore the lives of women―particularly queer women and mothers―and reveal the monsters lurking in our daily lives. We asked the author how she’s celebrating.
My short story collection pubs on May 8th, a Tuesday, but my launch party isn’t until May 10th, a Thursday, so I’ve done the only sensible thing and decided to turn that entire week into one big celebration. I intend to spend the whole week—when I’m not at work—surrounded by literature and the arts and will either be seeing a show, attending a reading, or giving a reading every night that week.
On Monday, I’m attending a lecture given by Viet Thanh Nguyen and hosted by Seattle Arts & Lectures, a prominent arts nonprofit and literary champion here in Seattle. I’m a big fan of The Sympathizer and The Refugees, so I’m looking forward to getting my books signed. Not sure yet what the topic of the lecture is going to be, but I have no doubt it will be brilliant.
On Tuesday, I’ll be reading in the At the Inkwell series at Vermillion in Seattle, then attending Peaches Christ’s Steel Dragnolias, a campy drag version of Steel Magnolias, one of my favorite films. For those unfamiliar with Peaches Christ, she’s a San Francisco-based drag queen known for producing queer retellings of classic and cult films. Earlier this year, I saw Peaches in Drag Becomes Her, a queer version of Death Becomes Her starring Seattle’s own BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon.
On Wednesday, I will be attending Seattle Opera’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida. For the past two years, I’ve gotten season tickets to the Seattle Opera, and every production I’ve seen has been phenomenal. Fun fact: as a child, I first learned of opera’s existence as an art form from the film Beaches—specifically, the song “Otto Titsling,” in which Bette Midler sings, “One night at the opera he saw an Aida whose bust was so big it would often impede her.” So I’m excited to at last come full circle and see the opera that first sparked my interest in the medium.
On Thursday, the official Night Beast Launch Party will take place at the Hugo House in Seattle. The Hugo House is a literary hub that offers classes, hosts readings and lectures, and supports the local literary community in myriad ways. For the past few years, I have had the great pleasure of teaching there, and this summer I will be offering a two-week course on dreams, nightmares, and night-time logic. I’m thrilled and honored to be officially launching my book at the Hugo House, and if you’re in Seattle I hope to see you there. There will be snacks!
On Friday, I’ll be headed back to the Hugo House to attend the last event in their annual Literary Series. Lydia Yuknavitch, Tarfia Faizullah, and Ijeoma Oluo will be reading from new work, and I’m excited to hear them read and get my copies of their books signed.
I plan to wrap up this week of festivities with an afternoon spent reading and relaxing in the park (weather permitting) and eating lots of ice cream; then, when things calm down, I plan to hunker down and finish my novel.
Ruth Joffre is the author of Night Beast. Born and raised in Northern Virginia, she graduated with honors from Cornell University and earned her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, Masters Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Nashville Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. She lives in Seattle, where she teaches writing and literature at the Hugo House.