Kristen Roupenian

Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning writer KRISTEN ROUPENIAN—author of the viral New Yorker short story "Cat Person"—for a discussion of her debut collection, You Know You Want This: "Cat Person" and Other Stories. She will be joined in conversation by Boston Globe "Love Letters" columnist MEREDITH GOLDSTEIN.

About You Know You Want This

You Know You Want This brilliantly explores the ways in which women are horrifying as much as it captures the horrors that are done to them. Among its pages are a couple who becomes obsessed with their friend hearing them have sex, then seeing them have sex . . . until they can’t have sex without him; a ten–year–old whose birthday party takes a sinister turn when she wishes for “something mean”; a woman who finds a book of spells half hidden at the library and summons her heart’s desire: a nameless, naked man; and a self-proclaimed “biter” who dreams of sneaking up behind and sinking her teeth into a green-eyed, long-haired, pink-cheeked coworker.

Spanning a range of genres and topics—from the mundane to the murderous and supernatural—these are stories about sex and punishment, guilt and anger, the pleasure and terror of inflicting and experiencing pain. These stories fascinate and repel, revolt and arouse, scare and delight in equal measure. And, as a collection, they point a finger at you, daring you to feel uncomfortable—or worse, understood—as if to say, “You want this, right? You know you want this.”

Praise

“If you think you know what this collection will be like, you’re wrong. These stories are sharp and perverse, dark and bizarre, unrelenting and utterly bananas. I love them so, so much.” —Carmen Maria Machado, National Book Award Finalist and author of Her Body and Other Parties

“In an age that needs a wrecking ball, You Know You Want This provides one. This is a raucous, visceral page-turner that tunnels into the heart of relationships gone awry, modern-day miscommunications, and other horrors of being human. Not polite. Suffers no fools. Takes no prisoners. Read it.” —Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation

"The 12 visceral stories here range from uncomfortable to truly horrifying and are often—though not always—focused on the vicious contradictions of being female . . . Unsettling, memorable, and—maybe perversely—very, very fun." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review