BOYS OF ALABAMA

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Esquire, Oprah Daily, Entertainment Weekly, Ms Magazine, Lit Hub, and Lambda Literary. An Apple Best Book of May. An Amazon Books Best Book of May. Finalist for the 2020 Oregon Book Award. Southern Indie Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick.

In this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. Although his German parents don’t know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives after being taken in by the football team. But when he meets fishnet-wearing Pan in physics class, they embark on a quixotic, consuming relationship. The boys, however, aren’t sure whose past is darker, and what is more frightening—their true selves, or staying true in Alabama.

PRAISE FOR BOYS OF ALABAMA

  • “It is at this meeting of bodies that a love story unfolds. And like all love stories, this one is not tidy, but beautiful.”

    –BELIEVER

  • “Hudson writes tenderly about cultural displacement, toxic masculinity, and friendship. This complex tale achieves a startling variation on the theme of teenage rebellion.”

    —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  • “A magical, deeply felt novel that breathes new life into an old genre.”

    —KIRKUS

  • “A gripping, uncanny, and queer exploration of being a boy in America, told with detail that dazzles and disturbs. I really love this book.”

    —MICHELLE TEA, author of Against Memoir

  • “Hudson’s prose is perfect and I will remember her Boys of Alabama for a long, long time.”

    —MELISSA FEBOS, author of Abandon Me

  • “Genevieve Hudson dismantles and spins a new category of fairy tale for us, one that’s equal parts dirt and splendor. A glinting, dark beauty. An incantation.”

    —T KIRA MADDEN, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

  • “Boys of Alabama brilliantly reinvents the Southern Gothic…. An absolutely magical novel.”

    —LENI ZUMAS, author of Red Clocks

  • “Genevieve Hudson mixes magic and faith, small-town politics and high-school mayhem, to depict a brand of Southern-fried masculinity that is immediately recognizable and startlingly fresh. An exquisite book. ”

    —NICK WHITE, author of Sweet & Low

  • “A novel that sets place as a touchstone. Every field is alive: every leaf, every insect, every crawling thing. Hands beget love, words set like sweetness on the tongue. The magic contained in Boys of Alabama's pages isn't just fixed in the beauty of its sentences; it's seen in the way that Hudson carefully crafts the intimacy between people and how she tenderly exposes queerness. This book is a fragile web, full of longing and ache and regret.”

    —KRISTEN ARNETT, author of Mostly Dead Things

  • “This novel is a spellbinding exploration of what it means to be a stranger in a strange place.”

    —KIMBERLY KING PARSONS, author of Black Light

  • “Genevieve Hudson creates a new American erotics of longing and belonging, flush with want and desire, hope and home, translation and transformation. A fantastic debut by one of my favorite new writers.”

    —MATT BELL, author of Scrapper

  • “Hudson goes right to a place where violence comes from–uncomfortably close to desire for magic, God, sex, whatever might actually heal us–and doesn’t turn away. A gorgeous, smart debut from an uncannily talented writer.”

    —KRISTIN DOMBEK, author of The Selfishness of Others

  • “Boys of Alabama reminds us that behind so many of America’s most rigid beliefs lies the lonely human heart: twitchy, slippery, alive.”

    —MIKKEL ROSENGAARD, author of The Invention of Ana

pretend we live here

A Finalist for the 2018 Lambda Literary Award. Entropy’s Best Books of 2018.

In her debut collection of stories, Genevieve Hudson explores the idea of home and what it means to find one: in the body, in the world, in other people. Her characters are seekers, whose actions are influenced by their slippery identities and by the strange landscapes that surround them. Set in Amsterdam, the Pacific Northwest, and the Deep South, these stories hum with sexual tension, queerness, displacement, longing, humor, and dark nostalgia.

PRAISE FOR pretend we live here

  • “A terrific collection of stories. There are echoes here of Flannery O’Connor, Barry Hannah, and Denis Johnson, but Genevieve Hudson is her own writer—impressively and gloriously so. Her eye for the clinching detail is unnerving and her sympathies are fascinatingly conflicted. I hope, and suspect, this book will be the start of a long and inspiring career.”

    —TOM BISSELL, author of The Disaster Artist and Magic Hours

  • “Jagged, queer, and nervy, these stories beat with an urgent, potent pulse.”

    — CHELSEY JOHNSON, author of Stray City

  • “Following desire, Hudson reminds us, can be blissfully life-affirming—it makes you bold, even as it drags you through dangerous places.”

    — THE ADROIT

  • “A dazzling, delicate piece of art that brands itself to the reader’s skin, leaving a searing memory and a sense of gratitude for the journey.”

    — NECESSARY FICTION

  • “Pretend We Live Here is collection rare and precious as sighting a white wolf–a must read.”

    —LAMBDA LITERARY

  • “This might be the closest thing to a perfect book that I’ve read in quite a while.”

    —THE BIG SMOKE

  • “Hudson captures the way we feed our obsessions—those metaphorical lion cubs with whom we decide to live—as we do our best to pretend that one day they won’t tear us limb from limb.”

    —THE STRANGER

A LITTLE LOVE IN EVERYONE

Growing up queer in the deep South, Genevieve Hudson longed for stories about lives like their own. She turned to Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking graphic memoir, Fun Home. In its panels, she found sly references to Bechdel’s personal influences. A Little in Love with Everyone is Hudson’s journey down a rabbit hole of queer heroes like Audre Lorde, Eileen Myles, and Adrienne Rich, who turned their stories into art and empowered future generations to embrace their own truths.

PRAISE FOR a little in love with everyone

  • “Sooner or later, we start searching for our histories,’ Genevieve Hudson writes in A Little in Love with Everyone. Hudson’s debut exploration of queerness, art, preservation, and the narrative threads of survival is a heroic feat. A meditation as inviting as it is illuminating on the visibility and invisibility of desire, this book will give you the feeling of being let in on the best-kept secret of all. Required reading.”

    —T KIRA MADDEN, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

  • “A Little in Love with Everyone is a precise and passionate account of finding one’s queer self in literature.” 

    —SARA JAFFE, author of Dryland

  • “Genevieve Hudson crafts a diverse celebration of queer history in a playfully personal yet astute book, a hybrid of analysis and confession and love letter. I can’t think of a better way to honor Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home or acknowledge the importance of queer mentors than Hudson’s A Little in Love with Everyone.”

    —TOMAS MONIZ, author of Big Familia

  • “This is the queer commentary book I needed as a teenager, and in my twenties, and today. Genevieve Hudson is a bold and intelligent new voice.”

    —CHLOE CALDWELL, author of Women & I’ll Tell You in Person