For more details or to schedule an interview, email Ashley Fortier or call 438-338-4591
Download a one-page PDF press kit.
About the Author
Addie Tsai teaches courses in literature, creative writing, dance, and humanities at Houston Community College. She collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein and Camille Claudel, among others. Addie holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman’s University. Her writing has been published in Banango Street, The Offing, The Collagist, The Feminist Wire, Nat. Brut., and elsewhere. She is the Nonfiction Editor at The Grief Diaries and Senior Associate Editor in Poetry at The Flexible Persona.
About the Book
Poppy wants to go to college like everyone else, but her father has other ideas. Ever since her mirror twin sister, Lola, mysteriously vanished, Poppy’s father has been depressed and forces her to stick around. She hopes she can convince Lola to come home, and perhaps also procure her freedom, by sending her twin a series of eighteen letters, one for each year of their lives.
When not excavating childhood memories, Poppy is sneaking away with her girlfriend Juniper, the only person who understands her. But negotiating the complexities of queer love and childhood trauma are anything but simple. And as a twin? That’s a whole different story.
In the Press
Specs
Title: Dear Twin
Author: Addie Tsai
Trim size: 5.25′ x 8′
Format: Paperback
Season: Fall 2019
Pub date: November 15, 2019
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-9990588-0-7 (paperback)
Category: Fiction, young adult
Target Audience: identical twins, queers, people with family trauma
Market
keywords: Asian Diaspora Literature, Coming of Age, Family/Relationships, LGBT, New Adult Fiction, First fiction
Quotable quote: “She tried to explain. It wasn’t about trust. It was about twins.”
See for comparison:
I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, ISBN: 978-0-1424257-6-3
Advance Praise
“In DEAR TWIN, debut novelist Addie Tsai offers readers a trenchant, unflinchingly honest, and startlingly funny emotional roller coaster that takes us deep beneath the surface of a young queer woman of colour’s life – and into the complexities of intimate violence in its many forms. DEAR TWIN explores the meanings of childhood, siblinghood, sexuality and survivorhood, defying reader expectations and rejecting simple binaries every step of the way. This book is a loving subversion of the YA genre. Read it and feel your heart crack open in all the best ways.” —Kai Cheng Thom, author of Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir
“DEAR TWIN is the most terrifying book I’ve read in years. Addie Tsai has rendered a world blisteringly similar to the one we live in where acceptance of one’s biography and queerness does not come easy. DEAR TWIN is the story of twins, the story of desire, the story of writing, and most importantly the story of eyes and bodies. It is rare that a book is as equally horrifying as it is beautiful, rigorous as it is readable, quiet as it is spectacular, but that is just what Tsai has created in DEAR TWIN. I have never read anything quite like it.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy, Long Division, and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America
“Deeply contemplative and poetic, Addie Tsai’s DEAR TWIN is soft and unabashedly queer. When Poppy Uzumaki’s twin sister disappears, Poppy begins writing her letters in the hopes of finding not only her sister, but also forgiveness and closure. At eighteen, Poppy longs to escape to a brighter future with her girlfriend Juniper but feels locked in place, wrestling with not only her own demons but also those of her grudging father and her wayward sister.
Tsai deftly navigates the complicated feelings of sisterhood, twinhood, and sharing a face and part of your soul with someone, and how that changes when they disappear. DEAR TWIN is an unwavering look at finding love and happiness and overcoming the pervasive idea that you don’t deserve either.” —CB Lee, author of Not Your Sidekick
“DEAR TWIN is an emotional, unique experience. Tsai’s exploration of queer identity, family, and adolescent ennui—paired with prose that’s both deft and inventive—will leave a lasting impression, especially on your heart. Through her dissection of the relationship between twins Poppy and Lola (who goes missing), Tsai weaves a heart-wrenching, raw, and sometimes obscure tale of the search for oneself in the chaos of a world that constantly tries to define us all.” —John Corey Whaley, author of Where Things Come Back, Noggin, and Highly Illogical Behavior.
Press Images
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- Photo by Cutloose Salon
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- Cover by Keet Geniza