Join author Melissa Duclos as we celebrate her new book, BESOTTED. She'll will be joined in a reading and conversation with writer Kimberly King Parsons. RSVP Here

About the Book

Besotted is the ballad of Sasha and Liz, American expats in Shanghai. Both have moved abroad to escape Sasha from her father s disapproval, Liz from the predictability of her hometown. When they move in together, Sasha falls in love, but the sudden attention from a charming architect threatens the relationship. Meanwhile, Liz struggles to be both a good girlfriend to Sasha and a good friend to Sam, her Shanghainese language partner who needs more from her than grammar lessons. For fans of Prague by Arthur Phillips and The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee, Besotted is an expat novel that explores what it means to love someone while running away from yourself.

MELISSA DUCLOS received her MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where she was awarded the Guston Fellowship. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Salon, The Offing, and Bustle among other venues. She is the founder of Magnify: Small Presses, Bigger, a monthly newsletter that celebrates small press books, and co-founder of Amplify: Women’s Voices, Louder, a series of writing retreats that aim to put woman-identifying writers on the path to publication.

KIMBERLY KING PARSONS is the author of the short story collection Black Light, forthcoming from Vintage on August 13, 2019, and the novel The Boiling River, forthcoming from Knopf. Her fiction has been published in Best Small Fictions 2017, New South, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Joyland, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Her book reviews and interviews have appeared in Bookforum, Fanzine, Time Out New York, The Millions, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner and sons in Portland, OR, where she is completing a novel about Texas, motherhood, and LSD