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"The Default World is a novel about a trans woman who sets out to exploit a group of wealthy roommates, only to fall under the spell of their hedonistic lifestyle"--
About the author
Naomi Kanakia is the author of three YA novels and a non-fiction book,
What’s So Great About Great Books, forthcoming from Princeton University Press. Her stories, poetry, and essays have been published in
American Short Fiction, Asimov’s, Gulf Coast, LitHub, and all kinds of other places. She has an MFA from Johns Hopkins and received the Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellowship in 2016. She lives in San Francisco with her wife and daughter.
Summary
A trans woman sets out to exploit a group of wealthy roommates, only to fall under the spell of their glamorous, hedonistic lifestyle in tech-bubble San Francisco.
Years after fleeing San Francisco and getting sober, Jhanvi has made a life for herself working at a grocery co-op and saving for her surgeries. But when her friend (and sometimes more) Henry mentions that he and his techie festival-goer friends spent $100,000 to transform a warehouse basement into a sex dungeon, Jhanvi starts wondering if there’s a way to exploit these gullible idiots. She returns to San Francisco, hatching a plan to marry Henry for his company’s generous healthcare benefits.
Jhanvi enters a world of beautiful, decadent fire-eaters and their lavish sex parties. But as her pretensions to cynicism and control start to fade, she develops a Gatsbyesque attraction to these happy young people and their bold claims of unconditional love. But do any of her privileged new friends really like or accept her? Her financial needs expose the limits of a community built on limitless self-expression, and soon she has to choose between doing what’s right, and doing what’s right for her.
This darkly funny novel skewers privileged leftist millennial tech culture, and asks whether "found family" is just another of the twenty-first century's broken promises.
Foreword
Freelance publicist, Wunderkind, will be promoting this book.
Both digital and print ARCs available in October
ARCs to sales reps, as well as select indie bookseller mailing
Both digital and print ARCs sent to media for national print, radio, and online campaign; targeted to outlets focused on the following coverage: literary, Asian/Asian American literature, queer and trans literature
Launch event in Bay Area bookstore, along with other bookstore events in New York, Baltimore, and several other cities
Promotion on Feminist Press e-newsletter, website, and social media channels
Blurbs sought from: Imogen Binnie, Torrey Peters, Casey Plett, Jeanne Thornton, Vivek Shraya, Cat Fitzpatrick, Michelle Tea
Social media campaign, with the book promoted by key literary influencers focusing on Asian/Asian American literature and queer and trans literature
Author is active on her own social media channels and writes a blog at https://woman-of-letters.com/
