Jeanne Thornton

media release: A Room of One's Own is thrilled to host author Jeanne Thornton for her newest novel, A/S/L. She will be joined in conversation with author Ben Pladek.

This is an in-person event at A Room of One's Own. This event is at 7 PM-8 PM.

About the book

1998: Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa are teenagers, scattered across the country but joined by the Internet as they create Saga of the Sorceress, a video game that will change everything, if only for the three of them.

Eighteen years later, Saga of the Sorceress still exists only on the scattered drives of its creators. Lilith works as a loan underwriter at a rinky-dink bank in Manhattan, a trans woman in a very cis world. Sash is in Brooklyn, working as a part-time webcam dominatrix. Neither knows that the other is in New York, or that Abraxa is just across the Hudson River, sleeping on the floor of a friend’s Jersey City home after a disaster at sea. They have never met in person and have been out of touch for years, but none have forgotten the sorceress or her unfinished quest.

Weaving together the technologies of two decades, and a healthy dose of magic, A/S/L is a novel that queers our notions of nostalgia, friendship, and even the possibilities of fiction itself, confirming Jeanne Thornton as one of our best and most ambitious novelists.  

Jeanne Thornton is the author of Summer Fun, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction and finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction, as well as The Black Emerald and The Dream of Doctor Bantam. Her fiction has appeared in n+1, WIRED, Evergreen Review, and other places. She is an editor at Feminist Press, as well as copublisher of Instar Books and coeditor of the Ignatz Award–winning We’re Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology. She lives in Brooklyn, and more information is available at jeannethornton.com.

Ben Pladek is associate professor of literature at Marquette University. His debut novel Dry Land came out in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Crawford Award. He's published fiction in Lightspeed, Slate Future Tense, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Learn more at bpladek.net.