Valencia

The 25th anniversary edition of Michelle Tea''s classic coming-of-age story, now with a foreword by Maggie Nelson, award-winning author of The Argonauts''Hilarious, euphoric, perspicacious and punk - the book that showed so many of us how writing can be real'' Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay Bar''One of the few truly life changing books I''ve encountered'' Torrey Peters, bestselling author of Detransition, BabyFleeing Tucson and her troublesome on-and-off ex-girlfriend, Michelle lands in queer San Francisco''s riotous underbelly, stumbling through her early twenties in a haze of nightlife, drug adventures, scams and a string of hookups, break-ups and make-ups. As butches and dykes spin in and out of her orbit, she considers the force and casual cruelty of their desires and her own. Heady, beer-sticky and brimming with life, Valencia is a sharply observed and piercingly funny chronicle of a year lived close to the bone. ''If you want to know how dangerous and great and awful it is to be a girl, you''ll scarf Valencia right up'' Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls''Michelle Tea is an intoxicating writer, delivering sentences that land with the snap and force of a punch'' Guardian