Today’s GalleyCrush is Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch, forthcoming from Doubleday on July 20, 2021.
Perfect pitch: “In this blazingly smart and voracious debut, an artist turned stay-at-home mom becomes convinced she’s turning into a dog.”
First line: “When she had referred to herself as Nightbitch, she meant it as a good-natured self-deprecating joke—because that’s the sort of lady she was, a good sport, able to poke fun at herself, definitely not uptight, not wound really tight, not so freakishly tight that she couldn’t see the humor in a light-hearted not-meant-as-an-insult situation—but in the days following this new naming, she found the patch of coarse black hair sprouting from the base of her neck, and was, like, What the fuck.”
Book buzz: “I could not love a novel more than Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch. It’s such a uniquely brilliant book, one that looks at the intersection of motherhood and art, the terror of ‘a thousand artless afternoons.’ It is so wonderfully observant, so precise, and yet manages to expand and expand upon those initial concerns, turning magical, dark, and funny.” —Kevin Wilson
Cover credit: Illustration courtesy of North American Meat Institute. Scan provided by Sally Edelstein.
Book notes: Hardcover, fiction, 256 pages.
Author bio: Rachel Yoder is a founding editor of draft: the journal of process. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona and an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Kenyon Review, and Literary Hub. She lives in Iowa City with her husband and son.
Correction: A previous version of this article misattributed credit for the cover art and design.
