HEADFIRST: a novel
A propulsive and sexy novel about difficult decisions, bad timing, and the one who got away.
From the outside, Reed has a great life. She lives in Amsterdam, works as a “creative” at a Dutch ad agency, and has a caring, driven girlfriend with whom she is trying to conceive a child. But, below the surface not everything is as it seems. Through a series of small choices and little compromises, Reed has lost sight of who she is and what she wants. A trip home to Charleston to attend her best friend’s wedding makes her wonder—who were those choices and compromises for?
When Reed is confronted with a long-lost love, she is faced with questions she can’t avoid. What kind of person does she want to be: one who plays it safe or takes risks? What life will she live, a comfortable or ambitious one? And, which part of her will set the terms for her life: her anxiety or her truest desires?
Praise for Headfirst:
“A perfectly chaotic one-that-got-away love story that captures all the paralyzing anxieties of modern love and life. Page-turning, fun as hell, and ultimately heartbreaking and heart-mending, this book is about taking the chances we must while there is still time on the clock. An anthem for living and loving with abandon.”—Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman and Heartbroke
“Headfirst is a delicious, horny drama—capacious with love, abundant with joy. Hudson, as always, spellbinds in their remarkable prose, asking expansive questions about commitment, friendship, gender performance, and what it means to grow up. Headfirst indulges an irresistible nostalgia; the messy buzz of youth. Humid and electric, these pages will keep you rapt and leave you reawakened.”—T Kira Māhealani Madden, author of Whidbey and Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
“Genevieve Hudson has composed a brilliant rumination on love, lust, friendship, adulthood, and art making. Full of longing, desire, and aching curiosity, this is a novel about running from yourself and finding yourself at the exact same time. Funny, wise, keenly observed, and exuberantly poetic, Headfirst is for anyone who has ever shirked their responsibilities or questioned their life’s choices—in other words, it’s for every single one of us.”—Kimberly King Parsons, author of National Book Award-nominated Black Light and We Were the Universe
“Sexy, queer and unputdownable Headfirst is the literary world’s next great crossover: a radical re-envisioning of the romantic comedy, a beach read, and an artful, intellectual, and deeply felt examination of identity forged beyond binaries. I read this book in one sitting and have been thinking of it ever since.”—Allie Rowbottom, author of Lovers XXX and Aesthetica
“Headfirst is the hot, tender, and uncannily familiar queer social novel I’ve been waiting for. Genevieve Hudson takes over the technology of fiction to deliver a work that shows us ourselves, in all our luscious, lustful, and messy glory. I see myself and my friends in this book; I see love, longing, and contradiction. It is profound to read a book and recognize your own experience. It made me laugh, cry, and celebrate the ways we search for lives that fulfill us. This book is needed, and next level. I love it.”—Cyrus Dunham, author of A Year Without a Name
BOYS OF ALABAMA
Named a Most Anticipated Book by Esquire, Oprah Daily, Entertainment Weekly, Ms Magazine, Lit Hub, and Lambda Literary. An Apple Best Book of May. An Amazon Best Book of May. Finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Shortlisted for the Stonewall Book Award. Southern Indie Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick.
In this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. Although his German parents don’t know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives after being taken in by the football team. But when he meets fishnet-wearing Pan in physics class, they embark on a quixotic, consuming relationship. The boys, however, aren’t sure whose past is darker, and what is more frightening—their true selves, or staying true in Alabama.
Praise for Boys of Alabama:
“This novel is a love song to outsiders of all kinds, a queer love story about the ways we find to heal ourselves and each other, and proof that there can be magic amid the burdens of masculinity. —MELISSA FEBOS, author of Dry Season and Abandon Me
“A gripping, uncanny, and queer exploration of being a boy in America, told with detail that dazzles and disturbs. I really love this book.” —MICHELLE TEA, author of Against Memoir
“The magic contained in Boys of Alabama's pages isn't just fixed in the beauty of its sentences; it's seen in the way that Hudson carefully crafts the intimacy between people and how she tenderly exposes queerness.”—KRISTEN ARNETT, author of Mostly Dead Things
“A brand of Southern-fried masculinity that is immediately recognizable and startlingly fresh. This is an exquisite book.”—NICK WHITE, author of How to Survive a Summer
“Hudson’s writing is magnetic. It’s the Kristen Stewart of prose—chameleon-like, layered, funny and serious and sad, really gay, and so attractive.... It wrecked me, just like I wanted.”—SARAH NEILSON, Them
PRETEND WE LIVE HERE
A Finalist for the 2018 Lambda Literary Award. Entropy’s Best Books of 2018.
In her debut collection of stories, Genevieve Hudson explores the idea of home and what it means to find one: in the body, in the world, in other people. Her characters are seekers, whose actions are influenced by their slippery identities and by the strange landscapes that surround them. Set in Amsterdam, the Pacific Northwest, and the Deep South, these stories hum with sexual tension, queerness, displacement, longing, humor, and dark nostalgia.
Praise for Pretend We Live Here:
“A terrific collection of stories. There are echoes here of Flannery O’Connor, Barry Hannah, and Denis Johnson, but Genevieve Hudson is her own writer—impressively and gloriously so. Her eye for the clinching detail is unnerving and her sympathies are fascinatingly conflicted. I hope, and suspect, this book will be the start of a long and inspiring career.” —TOM BISSELL, author of The Disaster Artist and Magic Hours
“Jagged, queer, and nervy, these stories beat with an urgent, potent pulse.”— CHELSEY JOHNSON, author of Stray City
“Pretend We Live Here is collection rare and precious as sighting a white wolf–a must read.”—LAMBDA LITERARY
“This might be the closest thing to a perfect book that I’ve read in quite a while.”—THE BIG SMOKE
A LITTLE LOVE IN EVERYONE
Growing up queer in the deep South, Genevieve Hudson longed for stories about lives like their own. She turned to Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking graphic memoir, Fun Home. In its panels, she found sly references to Bechdel’s personal influences. A Little in Love with Everyone is Hudson’s journey down a rabbit hole of queer heroes like Audre Lorde, Eileen Myles, and Adrienne Rich, who turned their stories into art and empowered future generations to embrace their own truths.
“Sooner or later, we start searching for our histories,’ Genevieve Hudson writes in A Little in Love with Everyone. Hudson’s debut exploration of queerness, art, preservation, and the narrative threads of survival is a heroic feat. A meditation as inviting as it is illuminating on the visibility and invisibility of desire, this book will give you the feeling of being let in on the best-kept secret of all. Required reading.”
“This is the queer commentary book I needed as a teenager, and in my twenties, and today. Genevieve Hudson is a bold and intelligent new voice.” —CHLOE CALDWELL, author of Women & Trying
“Genevieve Hudson crafts a diverse celebration of queer history in a playfully personal yet astute book, a hybrid of analysis and confession and love letter. I can’t think of a better way to honor Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home or acknowledge the importance of queer mentors than Hudson’s A Little in Love with Everyone.” —TOMAS MONIZ, author of Big Familia & All Friends Are Necessary