JONATHAN ABERNATHY IS A SELF-PROCLAIMED LOSER
PURCHASE JONATHAN ABERNATHY YOU ARE KIND HERE
Molly McGhee is from outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She completed her MFA in fiction at Columbia University, where, in addition to receiving a Chair’s Fellowship, she now teaches in the undergraduate creative writing department. She has worked in the editorial departments of McSweeney’s, The Believer, NOON, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Tor. Currently living in Brooklyn, her work has appeared in The Paris Review.
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Molly McGhee is from a cluster of small towns just north of Nashville, Tennessee. She writes fiction, essays, and teaches in the undergraduate creative writing department at Columbia University. Her debut novel, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, is forthcoming from Astra House in late 2023. Her work has appeared in publications like The Paris Review.
In addition to writing, Molly has worked in the editorial and digital departments of McSweeney’s and The Believer as well as MCD and FSG Originals and as an assistant editor at Diane Williams’ NOON. Most recently, Molly worked in the editorial department of Tor bringing luminaries such as John M. Ford back to print through The Tor Essentials Series, launching the instant New York Times Bestselling Atlas Six series, as well as assisting in the launch of Tor’s horror imprint, Nightfire.
Molly graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in fiction. While there she taught undergraduate creative writing as a Teaching Fellow.
You may reach Molly at mcghee.molly@columbia.edu or follow her at @mollymcghee. Her literary agent is Angeline Rodriguez at WME. Molly lives in Brooklyn.
Publications
JONATHAN ABERNATHY YOU ARE KIND
Astra House, 2023 (novel)
A debut novel about a man behind on his student loan payments who takes a job auditing the dreams of white collar workers, flagging their anxieties and preoccupations for removal, a tender, startling, and riotous reckoning with the emotional and psychological toll of late-stage capitalism.
AMERICA’S DEAD SOULS
The Paris Review, 2020 (essay)
There is money to be made off the dead. Nikolai Gogol knew this when he wrote his masterpiece, Dead Souls, the story of a middle-aged man named Chichikov who buys dead serfs with the intention of mortgaging their souls for a profit. I chose to read this novel at the start of quarantine, when everyone else was reading War and Peace. I had already read War and Peace. It ruined my life. I wasn’t keen to have my life ruined again. I wanted some other grand, sweeping Russian epic to fill my time.
Interviews
HOW STUDENT DEBT KILLED THE PLOT
The New York Times (2023)
If plot is a sequence of events, then the student loan crisis is upending the scale at which story lines, real andfiction, can progress.
YEAR-END INFLUENCES: LITERATURE
BOMB (2022)
For BOMB’s latest year-end list, we asked Alejandro Varela, Alyssa Songsiridej, Cat Fitzpatrick, Chloé Cooper Jones, Emily Raboteau, Hafizah Augustus Geter, Jean Chen Ho, Megan Milks, Molly McGhee, and Tiana Reid to describe something in a discipline or genre in which they don’t work that made an impact on their practice and/or thinking in 2022
THE DYNAMIC HEART: RIVKA GALCHEN INTERVIEWED BY MOLLY MCGHEE
BOMB (2022)
Rivka Galchen is a witch. No, that’s not right. She is a magician. Ah, that’s not it either. Let me try again. Rivka Galchen is a human woman. When she sits down across from me, in a low-slung chair, she slips off her mask and folds her hands in her lap. Those hands contain tremendous power.
Press
UNLIVABLE & UNTENABLE
Lithub: Fiction/Non/Fiction, 2022 (podcast)
Fiction writer and former Tor assistant editor Molly McGhee joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss details of her recent resignation from a position she’d fought for in the industry she loves.
THE GREAT PUBLISHING RESIGNATION
Bookriot, 2022 (press)
On March 12, 2022, four editors from two Big 5 publishing houses, all mid-level employees, publicly announced their resignations on Twitter.
IS THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY BROKEN?
Publishers Weekly, 2022 (press)
On March 12, 2022, four editors from two Big 5 publishing houses, all mid-level employees, publicly announced their resignations on Twitter.Max Perkins didn’t do as much administrative work as editorial assistants do today,” said Daniel Vazquez, an editor at Astra House.
WHEN WILL PUBLISHING STOP STARVING ITS YOUNG
The New York Times, 2022 (press)
On the copyright page of Olivie Blake’s fantasy novel “The Atlas Six,” readers might notice an unobtrusive line of print above the ISBN data and below the title. It says, “Edited by Molly McGhee.”
EDITORIAL RESIGNATIONS AT BIG HOUSES SPARK RECKONING
Publishers Marketplace, 2022 (press)
Multiple resignations from the editorial departments at two big houses caused an online reckoning on Friday. Four editors, Angeline Rodriguez and Hillary Sames at Orbit, Erin Siu at Macmillan Children’s, and Molly McGhee at Tor all announced their resignations, leading to a discussion about the workload of junior and mid-level employees and the difficulty of advancement across the industry.
tw: @mollymcghee
ig: @mcgheemolly
mcghee.molly@columbia.edu
agent: angeline rodriguez at WME
publicist: alexis nowicki
anowicki@astrapublishinghouse.com
REVIEWS
LISTS
Goodreads: This Fall’s Staff Picks
InsideHook: 10 Books You Should Read in October
Lit Hub: Halloween Horror—October’s best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
Time: Here Are the 15 New Books You Should Read This October
Lit Hub: 25 Novels You Need To Read This Fall
Good Housekeeping: 13 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2023
Polygon: 12 New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books To Read Fall 2023
Vulture: 24 Books We Can’t Wait To Read This Fall
Kirkus: Fall Preview 2023 10 Fiction Must-Reads
Kirkus: 150 Anticipated Books of The Fall
Tor.com: 30 More SFF Titles to Look Forward to in 2023
Lit Hub: Most Anticipated Books of 2023
The Millions: Most Anticipated Great 2023 Book Preview
Publishers Weekly: Writer’s to Watch
Lit Hub: 21 Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books to Look Forward to in 2023
November 20th
The Bookshop | Nashville, TN
Co-sponsored by the Porch
November 13th
Franklin Park Reading Series | Brooklyn, NY
Line-up TK
November 8th, 7:00 PM PT
Green Apple Books | San Francisco, CA
In conversation with Colin Winnette
November 3rd, 7:00 PM PT
Skylight Books | Los Angeles
In conversation with Sarah Rose Etter
November 2, 7:00 PM PT
Third Place Books | Seattle, WA
In Conversation with Samantha Allen
October 28th, 5:00 PM ET
Champlain College | Burlington, VT
In conversation with Tanya Stone
October 26th, 7:00 PM ET
Porter Square Books | Cambridge, MA
In conversation with Paul Tremblay
October 21st
Lost Weekend Literary Festival
Greedy Reads | Baltimore, MD
In conversation with Bartees Strange
October 20th, 7:00 PM ET
Loyalty Bookstore | Washington, DC
In conversation with Amber Sparks
October 17th, 7:30 PM ET
Greenlight Bookstore | Brooklyn, NY
In conversation with Alexandra Kleeman
September 23rd, 7:30 PM ET
EZ LVR | Brooklyn, NY
Reading with Solaa Saar, Gabriela Safa, Andrew K. Spaulding
March 9th, 4:00 PM PT
The Runaway | Seattle, WA
Electric Literature Presents New Dystopian Writing
Reading with Alexandra Kleeman, Hilary Leichter, Megan Giddings, Isle Mcelroy, Megan Giddings, Sequoia Nagamatsu
Molly McGhee reminds me of absolutely no one. Here’s an original mind brimming over with invention and comic ferocity and a new world sensibility that serves to remind us what good hands the future of literature is in. I am hugely excited for everyone to read this mad, hilarious writer
—Ben Marcus, Guggenheim Fellow and author of The Flame Alphabet
“The fiction of Molly McGhee is funny, freaky, intellectually bold and always from the heart. McGhee has seen enough of the world to know that you’ve got to start some trouble in it. She also knows that seeing the humor in our personal foibles and social absurdities (cruel as the latter often are), will always be a powerful way to commiserate with your fellow humans. Here is a writer who is keenly aware of what we’ve all got coming, but in the meantime is never afraid to laugh and live and fight on the page.
—Sam Lipsyte, Guggenheim Fellow and The New York Times Bestselling author of The Ask
Molly McGhee is a fearlessly inventive and exquisitely poised writer, one who knows how to aim right at the jugular of today’s optimization-obsessed technocratic capitalism. Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is trippy, incisive, and, most importantly, riotously funny.
—Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
Welcome to the somnambulatory prose of Molly McGhee, where vivid nightmares and lucid tender dreams live side by side. Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is a revelation told with the honesty and delicacy of a drowsy oracle. There’s nothing like it, awake or asleep or anywhere in between.
—Hilary Leichter, author of Temporary
“An exuberant, poignant, freewheeling debut full of complication and surprise. It is also often very funny.”
—Jeff VanderMeer, author of the NYT-bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy
“McGhee grapples skillfully with the complicated ethical questions at the core of late-stage capitalism. How much of yourself must you sacrifice in order to make a life? “
—Isle McElroy, author of People Collide
“A deeply humane novel that perfectly marries the strangeness and terror of everything we can’t explain about ourselves, to ourselves, and the everyday horrors of contemporary workplace culture. Molly McGhee knows the stuff our dreams are made of — she’s a marvelous chronicler of the fantastic, the perverse, and the sublime.”
—Kelly Link, Guggenheim Fellow and author of The Book Of Love
In the light of this insightfully nightmarish parable of the pervasive ravages of debt, Abernathy’s optimism, and the serene pace of McGhee’s prose, are stone cold chilling.
— Halle Butler, Granta Best Young American Novelist and author of The New Me
Vacillating between humor and heartbreak at breakneck speeds, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is the rare novel that truly feels like it could’ve only been written by a single brilliant mind.
—Jean Kyoung Frazier author of Pizza Girl
“Molly McGhee’s luminary imagination makes this debut a wonder. Precision, humor, heart, this is a stunner.”
—Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, bestselling author of Friday Black and Chain-Gang All-Stars
Molly McGhee is from a cluster of unincorporated towns outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She completed her MFA in fiction at Columbia University, where, in addition to receiving a Chair’s Fellowship, she teaches in the undergraduate creative writing department. She has worked in the editorial departments of McSweeney’s, The Believer, NOON, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Tor. Currently living in Brooklyn, her work has appeared in The Paris Review.
COUNTDOWN UNTIL JONATHAN ABERNATHY YOU ARE KIND
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