Natalie Beach and Jamie Loftus at Harvard Book Store

Harvard Book Store welcomes acclaimed authors NATALIE BEACH and JAMIE LOFTUS for a discussion of their new books Adult Drama and Other Essays and Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs.

About Adult Drama

Natalie Beach became an internet sensation when her essay on her toxic friendship with Instagram influencer Caroline Calloway went viral. Now, for the first time, and in her own indelible voice, Beach offers a revelatory glimpse into her own life alongside a broader cultural criticism of the world today. Through stories of heartbreak, odd jobs, political activism, existential crises and low-rise jeans, Natalie Beach explores the high stakes and absurdist comedy of coming of age in a world gone mad.

Effervescent, hilarious and unflinchingly self-aware, Adult Drama marks the arrival of an electrifying new literary voice.

About Raw Dog

Hot dogs. Poor people created them. Rich people found a way to charge fifteen dollars for them. They’re high culture, they’re low culture, they’re sports food, they’re kids' food, they’re hangover food, and they’re deeply American, despite having no basis whatsoever in America's Indigenous traditions. You can love them, you can hate them, but you can’t avoid the great American hot dog.

Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs is part investigation into the cultural and culinary significance of hot dogs and part travelog documenting a cross-country road trip researching them as they’re served today. From avocado and spice in the West to ass-shattering chili in the East to an entire salad on a slice of meat in Chicago, Loftus, her pets, and her ex eat their way across the country during the strange summer of 2021. It’s a brief window into the year between waves of a plague that the American government has the resources to temper, but not the interest.

So grab a dog, lay out your picnic blanket, and dig into the delicious and inevitable product of centuries of violence, poverty, and ambition, now rolling around at your local 7-Eleven.

Praise for Adult Drama

“Natalie Beach is a writer whose work feels like it contains the force of a revelation. These essays both delighted and astonished me, often within the same sentence, for their ribald and vulnerable intimacy, the canny insight with which she examines how we shape ourselves within friendships, within clothes—from low-rise jeans to soccer shorts—within the various pressures and structures of modern life. This debut marks the arrival of a major new talent, a voice readers are going to deeply identify with and love, to read and re-read again and again.” —Mary South, author of You Will Never Be Forgotten

"From her intensely intelligent essays to her downright poetic text messages, Natalie Beach’s distinctive voice combines erudition, humor, and incisiveness in a way that I’ve admired for many years. There’s truly no one I’d rather read on the subject of existential dread and growing up. I’d devour Natalie’s grocery lists if she let me!" —Amanda Montell, author of Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

Praise for Raw Dog

“Jamie Loftus is a wise and funny storyteller, and her enthusiasm is inspiring. There’s so much about hot dogs that you need to know, and Jamie is here to teach you!” ―Andy Richter, actor and writer

“A moving, gorgeously written and lovingly researched dive into the world of hot dogs, American nationalism, in-group scandal, and delicate human relationships. This gonzo yet vulnerable trek is meaty, fun, critical, and evocative all at once. Jamie Loftus is the hot dog generation's Joan Didion.” ―Gabe Dunn, New York Times bestselling coauthor of I Hate Everyone But You

“Jamie Loftus is the best travel companion a reader could ask for, and in Raw Dog she takes us on a revealing, funny, sad, horny, and insatiably curious journey across America, and into the truth of what it means to be human.” ―Sarah Marshall, host of the podcast You’re Wrong About

Mask Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.