Description
A mystery and queer hauntology, NONE OF THIS IS AN INVITATION is a literary thriller.
NONE OF THIS IS AN INVITATION follows Nina Morris, a young woman desperate to escape the defining event of her youth: the disappearance of her friend and love interest, Alex. One freakishly wintry night in Texas, Alex enters the woods of Bidwell Ridge, and–like the girls of urban legends–is never seen again. Nearly two decades later, after Nina’s many failed attempts to reinvent herself, Alex returns in phantasmic form beckoning Nina back to the enigmatic dreamscape of their Texas girlhood. Through the uncanny surreality of a mirror world, Nina sets out to solve the enigma of their shared past: did Nina’s older brother abduct Alex? Did Alex commit suicide? Is she still alive after all these years in Bidwell Ridge? What worldly or unworldly forces entwine their fates: a haunted hometown, a curse, or an unspoken desire?
Fiction. LGBTQ+ Studies.
“NONE OF THIS IS AN INVITATION is a novella of double-takes. I loved living in the uncanny misdirection, the self-doubt, the unstable points of view. Every image accrues heft alongside the quicksilver narrative. Each chapter break jolted me, like waking up from a dream of falling.”
—Jac Jemc, author of Empty Theatre and The Grip of It
“Jessica Alexander & Katie Jean Shinkle prove in NONE OF THIS IS AN INVITATION that the secret ingredient for a great ghost story is desire with all its traps. A strange little gem of a book that will be hard for readers to put down.”
—Megan Giddings, author of The Women Could Fly and Lakewood
Author Bio
Jessica Alexander's collaborative project That Woman Could Be You (co-written with Vi Khi Nao) was published out of BlazeVox in 2022. Her story collection, Dear Enemy (Subito Press, 2017), was the winning manuscript in the 2016 Subito Prose Contest, as judged by Selah Saterstrom. Her fiction has been published in journals such as Fence, Black Warrior Review, PANK, Denver Quarterly, The Collagist, and DIAGRAM. She lives in Louisiana where she teaches creative writing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Author City: LAFAYETTE, LA USA
Katie Jean Shinkle is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently, THICK CITY (Bull City Press, 2023), and Tannery Bay (with Steven Dunn, FC2, forthcoming 2024). Other work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Foglifter, Crazyhorse, Witness, Gulf Coast, Fugue, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. A 2021 Lambda fellow, she serves as co-poetry editor of DIAGRAM.
Author City: HOUSTON, TX USA