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Reading like a cross between Shelia Heti's How Should A Person Be? and Lily King's Writers & Lovers, We Play Ourselves is a wildly entertaining debut novel of female rage, self-sabotage, the pursuit of fame and the costs of artistic ambition.
About the author
Jen Silverman is a New York-based writer and playwright. Jen is the author of the story collection The Island Dwellers (2018), which was longlisted for a PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction, and the poetry chapbook Bath (2022), selected by Traci Brimhall for Driftwood Press. Additional work has appeared in Vogue, the Paris Review, Ploughshares, LitHub and elsewhere. Residencies and fellowships include: MacDowell, New Dramatists, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Jen's plays have been produced across the United States and internationally, in countries including Australia and the UK; they include Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties, The Moors, The Roommate and Witch. Jen also writes for TV and film. We Play Ourselves is Jen's debut novel.
www.jensilverman.com
Summary
'As funny as it's intellectual, this page-turner about crashing and burning is spot-on about ambition, infatuation, theatre, film, ethics, teens, and everything else.' Emma Donoghue, author of Room
'Witty...Earnest...Laugh-out-loud...Pitch-perfect' New York Times
When Cass - a thirty something year old queer playwright - receives a prestigious award, it seems as though her career is finally taking off. That is until she finds herself at the centre of a searing public shaming. Fleeing New York, Cass moves to L.A. to start anew. Once there, she is pulled into the orbit of her charismatic neighbour, a filmmaker who's making an ethically murky documentary inspired by a group of teenage girls and their underground fight club. But just as Cass begins to dream of a comeback, the past starts to catch up with her and she is forced once more to reckon with her ambition and the chaos it creates. We Play Ourselves is a darkly funny novel about the cost of making art, and the art of making enemies.
'Funny, sharp, modern - this is an excellent debut novel. Its bold, edgy, strange heroine has adventures and misadventures, screws up again and again, but somehow won my love. I couldn't put this book down.' Weike Wang, PEN/Hemingway-award winning author of Chemistry
