The Dinner Party: a book about love
May 2026 · Seven Stories Press
Ebook
96
Pages
infoThis book will become available on May 19, 2026. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this ebook
Cat Fitzpatrick delights in this post-pandemic follow-up to her debut verse novel of present-day manners, The Call-Out—
a trans community celebration of mores, gender theory, and rhyme.
The Dinner Party returns to the chaotic and adorable world of trans femme. The title piece begins… “The ‘Rona being now at last abated,” and continues with cameo portraits of the seven guests she plans to invite, including:
Together, as we had in days gone by.
I asked Rakshasi, clad in black, so thin,
So eager for some trouble to get in,
Of any kind, and Sophie, blunt and dry,
Who often ended up the night so pissed
She’d trip and fall when climbing up the stairs,
And learned Bridget, sweet, beset by cares,
Who always talks about her therapist ––
My besties. Plus I asked along a pair
Of mascs: Adonis, such a charming youth,
More interested in beauty than in truth
Who drives a motorbike and braids his hair,
And Dominic, less young, but full of poise,
A trickster with a most provoking grin,
More pleased with contradiction than with sin,
And even more with argument than boys,
Joining “The Dinner Party” are several other themed pieces, including “A Stay in the Country,” a short arcadian pageant, “Baby Book,” about the trials and tribulations of making babies as queer and transsexual couples, “Letter to Crabstick,” an epistolatory friendship, and “Uxorious Sonnets,” a collection of eight love poems, among them Sonnet 6 in which she writes:
it’s almost terrifying when we fuck
how there I am, how in that jostle and shove
of flesh, my thoughts, that mostly run amuck,
contract to simply shouting Love You Love.
a trans community celebration of mores, gender theory, and rhyme.
The Dinner Party returns to the chaotic and adorable world of trans femme. The title piece begins… “The ‘Rona being now at last abated,” and continues with cameo portraits of the seven guests she plans to invite, including:
Together, as we had in days gone by.
I asked Rakshasi, clad in black, so thin,
So eager for some trouble to get in,
Of any kind, and Sophie, blunt and dry,
Who often ended up the night so pissed
She’d trip and fall when climbing up the stairs,
And learned Bridget, sweet, beset by cares,
Who always talks about her therapist ––
My besties. Plus I asked along a pair
Of mascs: Adonis, such a charming youth,
More interested in beauty than in truth
Who drives a motorbike and braids his hair,
And Dominic, less young, but full of poise,
A trickster with a most provoking grin,
More pleased with contradiction than with sin,
And even more with argument than boys,
Joining “The Dinner Party” are several other themed pieces, including “A Stay in the Country,” a short arcadian pageant, “Baby Book,” about the trials and tribulations of making babies as queer and transsexual couples, “Letter to Crabstick,” an epistolatory friendship, and “Uxorious Sonnets,” a collection of eight love poems, among them Sonnet 6 in which she writes:
it’s almost terrifying when we fuck
how there I am, how in that jostle and shove
of flesh, my thoughts, that mostly run amuck,
contract to simply shouting Love You Love.
About the author
CAT FITZPATRICK's debut novel, The Call-Out (Seven Stories Press, 2022), was awarded the 2023 Lambda Award for Transgender Fiction. She is the author of the poetry collection Glamourpuss (Topside Press, 2016), and the co-editor of the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction & Fantasy from Transgender Writers, which won the ALA Stonewall Award for Literature. Fitzpatrick is the first trans woman Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Rutgers University–Newark, and she also serves as the Editrix at LittlePuss Press. The Dinner Party (Seven Stories Press, 2026) is her second novel in verse.
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