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Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Housemates, the highly-anticipated debut novel by Emma Copley Eisenberg, which will be published by Hogarth on May 28th, 2024. You can pre-order your copy here.
When Bernie answers Leah’s ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two find themselves caught in an intense and unique friendship—for which art and artmaking are cornerstones. Bernie, a photographer, and Leah, a writer, share a drive to capture the world around them.
When Bernie’s former photography professor—the renowned, yet drenched in scandal Daniel Dunn, dies—leaving her an inheritance, Leah accompanies Bernie on the road trip through America’s heartland, rural Pennsylvania, where they attempt to document the country through words and photographs.
As Bernie and Leah chase everything—their own ideas, dreams, and answers to their questions—they come into contact and conversation with people from every corner of life. Along the way, they begin to reach for the limits of their capabilities, both romantically and artistically.
From the acclaimed author of The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, comes a debut novel of warmth, insight, and heart, a glorious celebration of queer life, and the redemptive force of love and art.
Here is the cover, designed by Lynn Buckley.
“As a queer designer, it was so exciting to work with a queer author dedicated to an authentic portrayal of queer life,” says Buckley. “I enjoyed making something that felt true to my experiences, and those of the characters in Housemates.”
Eisenberg agrees, noting that the cover feels like a love letter celebrating queerness, artmaking, and the book’s West Philadelphia setting. “I was hoping for a cover that conjured a feeling of being both close and far at the same time, home and away at the same time, together and alone at the same time, and this cover simply NAILS that twoness. The novel is about falling in romantic love and art love with your housemate (queer chaos!), about figuring out how to relate to the artists that came before you, and how to live in hyper close proximity to other people, so I love the way that the bright colors and graphic shape suggest the openness of the road while the blue houses suggest the joyful claustrophobia of the Philly neighborhood where the book is set.”
