Holly Wilson presents Kittentits

It’s 1992, and ten-year-old Molly is tired of living in the fire-rotted, nun-haunted House of Friends: a Semi-Cooperative Living Community of Peace Faith(s) in Action with her formerly blind dad and their grieving housemate Evelyn. But when twenty-three-year-old Jeanie, a dirt bike–riding ex-con with a shady past, moves in, she quickly becomes the object of Molly’s adoration. She might treat Molly terribly, but they both have dead moms and potty mouths, so naturally Molly is the moth to Jeanie’s scuzzy flame.

When Jeanie fakes her own death in a hot-air balloon accident, Molly runs away to Chicago with just a stolen credit card and a sweet pair of LA Gear Heatwaves to meet her pen pal Demarcus and hunt down Jeanie. What follows is a race to New Year’s Eve, as Molly and Demarcus plan a séance to reunite with their lost moms in front of a live audience at the World’s Fair.

A surrealist and bold take on the American coming-of-age novel, Holly Wilson’s debut is about the interstices of loss, grief, and friendship.

Holly Wilson’s work has appeared in Narrative magazine, Redivider, Northwest Review, Short Story, New Stories from the South, and elsewhere. She was a Kingsbury Fellow at Florida State University, where she received a PhD in creative writing. She grew up in Kansas and currently makes her home in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where she lives with her son. She’s an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.