Clutch: Emily Nemens on Her Latest Novel

Emily Nemens’s second novel, Clutch, follows a group of five women, friends for twenty years, as they go through the biggest challenges of their lives. According to novelist Kimberly King Parsons, Clutch "is a powerfully intimate portrait of female friendship... With razor-sharp insight, humor, and deep compassion, Nemens explores how these women navigate life’s most challenging moments, proving that even when circumstances threaten to tear them apart, the bonds forged in youth can become the foundation for reinvention," while author Jonathan Escoffery called it "a big-hearted and daring novel from one of our finest creative and critical minds."

The evening will include a reading from the novel and a conversation between Nemens and acclaimed author and translator Jennifer Croft. Clutch will be published by Tin House/Zando on Feb 3, 2026 and will be available at the event.

Presented by Boris Dralyuk in partnership with Tulsa Artist Fellowship and Magic City Books.

Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Doors Open: 5:30 PM

Reading & Conversation: 6:00 - 8:00 PM

Tulsa Artist Fellowship Project Space

205 E. Archer Street, Tulsa, OK 74103

Light beverages will be provided.

is a writer, editor, illustrator, and educator. Her debut novel, The Cactus League, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2020, and her second novel, Clutch, will be published by Tin House/Zando in early 2026. From 2018 to 2021, Nemens served as editor of The Paris Review, where the magazine won the 2020 American Society of Magazine Editors’ Award for Fiction. Previously, she coedited The Southern Review, a heralded literary journal published at Louisiana State University. Stories published during her tenures at The Southern Review and The Paris Review were selected for the Pushcart Prize anthology, Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize anthology, and PEN America Best Debut Fiction. In 2021, she joined Stranger’s Guide as sports/senior editor. Her fiction has appeared in Esquire, n+1, The Iowa Review, Blackbird, and The Gettysburg Review. She was a fellow and then curator for the Hermitage Artist Retreat and has had residencies at the Kerouac Project and Hewnoaks. She lives in New Jersey and remains a Mariners fan.

About the Host

won a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship for her novel The Extinction of Irena Rey, which was among The Wall Street Journal’s 10 Best Books of 2024 and has been translated into nine languages. She received the 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her illustrated memoir Homesick and the 2018 International Booker Prize for her translation from Polish of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. She is also the translator of Federico Falco’s A Perfect Cemetery, Romina Paula’s August, Pedro Mairal’s The Woman from Uruguay, and Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob (a finalist for the Kirkus Prize). In 2023, she received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Her memoir on pregnancy and postcards will be published by Catapult Books in 2026. A two-time National Book Award honoree, Croft is Presidential Professor of English & Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa. She lives in Tulsa and is a Tulsa Artist Fellowship alumna.

About the Presenters

is a poet, translator, and critic. He is the author of My Hollywood and Other Poems (Paul Dry Books, 2022) and Western Crime Fiction Goes East: The Russian Pinkerton Craze 1907–1934 (Brill, 2012). He has edited 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution (Pushkin Press, 2016), co-edited The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin Classics, 2015), and translated works by Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, Maxim Osipov, and Mikhail Zoshchenko. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, The Guardian, and Granta. Dralyuk’s honors include first prize in the Compass Translation Award (2011), the Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Translation Prize (2012), the inaugural Kukula Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Book Reviewing (2020), the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize from the National Book Critics Circle for his translation of Andrey Kurkov’s Grey Bees (2022), and a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2024). He is also a 2024–2026 Tulsa Artist Fellow. Formerly editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, he is now editor-in-chief of Nimrod International Journal and teaches in the English Department at the University of Tulsa.

is an independent bookstore owned by the nonprofit Tulsa Literary Coalition. We specialize in literary and popular fiction and narrative nonfiction for adults. We also offer carefully curated sections for children and teens. We want Magic City Books to be your “third place,” the place besides home and work where you feel most comfortable. Come visit us, attend a literary program or author event, and get to know our knowledgeable and well-read staff.

Established in 2015, was created as a place-based initiative by the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) that addresses pressing challenges faced by contemporary artists and arts workers living in and joining Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa Artist Fellowship believes the arts are critical to advancing cultural citizenship and supports community-invested practitioners who intentionally engage with our city. Our exhibitions and events are free, documented, and archived.

Visitor Experience

Tulsa Artist Fellowship accommodates wheelchairs and strollers. Variable seating is provided in addition to areas for distanced standing. Family-scale private washrooms are available to support visitors with disabilities and caregivers who need access to increased square footage. Street-side parking is available using the Park Mobile App and is free after 5 pm and all day Saturday-Sunday.

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