In-Store: Eshani Surya: Ravishing w/ Roxane Gay

Event guidelines:

• Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/wzh0H1KjdXk
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].

A brilliant and compelling debut, Ravishing shines a light on the dark enticements of the beauty industry and how it capitalizes on our desire to be someone we are not.

A provocative, darkly surreal novel of two Indian American siblings caught in the clutches of a beauty tech company, Ravishing is a searing portrait of the beauty industry’s dangerous ability to change people’s relationship to their bodies and the cult-like grip it has on youth.

For teenage Kashmira, it’s painful to look in the mirror; she has her father’s face, and every feature is a reminder of his abandonment. When a friend introduces her to Evolvoir, a beauty product that changes users’ features, Kashmira is quickly hooked on how it allows her to erase the triggers of her grief. Meanwhile, at Evolvoir’s corporate offices, Kashmira’s estranged brother Nikhil first sees the product as an opportunity to make a difference and a name for himself, but is quickly mired in corporate complicity as reports surface of the product causing severe pain and persistent symptoms in some users. As chaos ensues, Kashmira is hospitalized and must negotiate the constraints of her new reality, while Nikhil uncovers a vicious truth that will force him to decide where his loyalties lie.

Perfect for readers of Gold Diggers and You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, Ravishing is a visceral, yet immensely tender, coming-of-age story of two Indian American siblings caught in the clutches of a predatory beauty tech company, providing an illuminating portrait of the complexities of growing up brown, chronic illness, and our relationship to ourselves.

Eshani Surya is a chronically ill South Asian writer living in Philadelphia. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona and is a 2023 finalist for the A.C. Bose Grant for Speculative Literature, a 2022 Asian Women Writer’s Workshop mentee, a 2022 Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop scholarship recipient, and a 2021 Mae Fellowship recipient. Ravishing is her first novel.

Roxane Gay is a writer, editor, and professor. She is the author of several bestselling books including Bad Feminist, Hunger, Difficult Women, and Opinions A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business. She is also the author of the Eisner Award winning World of Wakanda for Marvel and the editor of Best American Short Stories 2018. Her short stories and essays can be found in Harper’s Bazaar, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and the editor of an eponymous imprint at Grove Atlantic. In 2018, she won a Guggenheim fellowship. She is also the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and working on several books and film and television projects. Her newsletter, The Audacity, is hosted at Substack.

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