Lauren Friedlander’s debut novel, Sensual World, is a surreal Midwestern campus gothic about ambition, obsession, and the terrifying lengths we’ll go in the name of art. Seventeen-year-old Bet Cowl escapes her remote Kansas hometown after discovering the manuscript of a supposedly cursed play and earning admission to the infamous acting conservatory founded by its playwright, Una Flood. There, Bet falls into an intense friendship with former child star Helen as the two endure increasingly extreme demands on their bodies, minds, and relationship. Queer, strange, and darkly funny, Sensual World asks what happens when artistic devotion begins to look a lot like self-destruction.
Friedlander is a writer and graphic designer from Kansas who now lives in New York. She is a recipient of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Sensual World will be published by Catapult on March 23, 2027.
Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Sensual World, designed by Victoria Maxfield and art-directed by Nicole Caputo. Below, Friedlander discusses the visual moodboard that accompanied her through eight years of writing, the artistic references that shaped the novel’s strange world, and the uncanny experience of finally seeing her book with a face of its own.
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