Max Delsohn

media release: A Room of One's Own is thrilled to host debut author Max Delsohn in celebration of his newly released short story collection CRAWL. He will be joined in conversation by Emily Mills. 

This is and in-person event at A Room of One's Own Bookstore.

About the book

A darkly comic, introspective debut collection that looks beneath the surface of trans life in 2010s Seattle

People called it paradise, but baby, it wasn’t.

What to do when starting testosterone unlocks a newfound desire for men? How to respond when your boss’s boss asks if you’ve had “the surgery” and then requests you talk her niece out of transitioning? What obligation do you have to intervene in the faltering mental health of the baby trans drug dealer you’ve met only once while tripping on the acid he sold you?

The young transmasculine characters in Crawl navigate these and other questions in the dive bars, bathhouses, parks, workplaces, music venues, beaches, and college campuses of 2010s Seattle. Max Delsohn’s stories—by turns exuberant, heartfelt, tragic, and wry—portray the pleasures and pains of sex and romance, the possibilities and ambivalences of gender expression, and the joys and failures of community in a city and a time that has branded itself a radical queer utopia but proves much more complicated in reality.

Emily Mills (they/them) is a Madison-based writer, musician, organizer, DJ, and nature nerd. They served as editor of Our Lives, Wisconsin's only LGBTQ media outlet, from 2012-2019 and have since become president of its editorial board of directors. Emily spent several years as an opinion columnist, first for Isthmus and then the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, before migrating to their own newsletter, Grist From the Mills. Their words also appear at The Recombobulation Area and Tone Madison. Their current day job has them doing Marketing & Communications for an environmental non-profit, while in the rest of their life they skate with Madison Roller Derby, play drums with the bands Damsel Trash and LINE, and hold a monthly DJ residency at the Cardinal Bar with their "Hot Flash" early dance parties.

Max Delsohn is a writer who grew up in Thousand Oaks, CA and spent ten years in Seattle, WA. His debut short story collection, Crawl, will be published by Graywolf Press on October 21, 2025. His work appears in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Rumpus, VICE, Joyland, and Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games, edited by Carmen Maria Machado and J. Robert Lennon. He’s received fellowships and residencies from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for The Arts, Hugo House and the Mineral School. He earned his MFA in fiction from Syracuse University. He also used to work as a stand-up comedian, and was featured at 10,000 Laughs, Second City’s Break Out Comedy Festival, 208 Comedy Festival, Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, and Intersections Festival.