The Devil Strip Magazine presents the Akron book launch of Mila Jaroniec’s new novel “Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover” at Jilly’s Music Room Friday, Nov. 18 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Mila Jaroniec will be reading excerpts from her newly published book by Split Lip Press and will answer questions moderated by community advocate Connie Williams in a half hour Q&A.
Also reading will be non fiction author Emma Shepard from her recent Bottlecap Press published book “I Am Trying To Fall In Love With Myself But Instead I Keep Falling In Love With Unemployed Noise Musicans Who Do Coke and Believe in the Power of Crystals.”
Noor Hindi will be kicking off the night by reading poetry excerpts from her most recent work.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Split Lip Press is excited to announce the forthcoming publication of “Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover”, the debut novel by Mila Jaroniec. A stunning new voice, Mila brings echoes of Michelle Tea and Hunter S. Thompson while delivering a work of astonishing precision and subtlety.
With razor-sharp imagery, the fractured story of our narrator comes to life: A young woman at an emotional crossroads embarking on a journey to her future. Or is she falling into her past?
Through flashbacks, photographs, confessions and letters, we discover our narrator—as queer sex store worker, suicide survivor, isolated lover, immigrant’s daughter, deliberate alcoholic and artistic failure. She cycles through images, obsessions and memories, as she tries to glue together the unhinged parts of herself, both in the physical world and the one in her mind. She recalls Sloan, the girlfriend-who-got-away; Mischa, her heartbroken best friend and co-conspirator; and her elusive older brother, whose absence continues to shape her life.
In New York’s City’s bars, bedrooms, and elsewhere, Jaroniec evokes the lives of queer underground angels, their deep friendships, their passions and their struggles.
Acclaimed author Darcey Steinke notes that Mila writes with “a seer’s vision and a poet’s touch.” Gaby Dunn, creator of the YouTube series Just Between Us, says “’Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover’ is about being young and stupid and also too smart for your own good. It’s about the undying friendship between queer women…above all, it’s about living through this, as Courtney Love would say.”
“Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover” is a road novel with no road, a coming of age story that arrives at its beginning. What starts as a journey to reclaim a lost love ultimately becomes an examination of a different sort of loss, of something intangible whose weight is still felt, the effects of which are deep-seated and ineffable.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mila Jaroniec is the editor of drDOCTOR and her work has appeared in Playboy, Hobart, Joyland, LENNY, Teen Vogue, Luna Luna Magazine, FLAPPERHOUSE, Nylon, and Milkfist, among others. She earned her MFA in fiction from The New School and currently lives in Akron, Ohio.
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