Lubchansky Home News, February 2025

BOOK COVER REVEAL!!!!!!!!! And some March Events

Feb 28, 2025

HELLO EVERYONE!!!!! we finally, finally, finally finally revealed the cover for SIMPLICITY!! It’s out July 29. You can preorder it now!

Preorder SIMPLICITY

In the 2080s, Lucius Pasternak, a timid trans academic, leaves the comfort of the walled city-state of New York and treks into the wilds of “upstate” to study a cult — and winds up with way more than he bargained for. It’s a story about what we owe each other when the world is ending, gender liberation, and most importantly being so horny that you kind of go insane and have sex with a tree (?)

Guys! I’m so proud of this book. I cannot DESCRIBE to you how excited I am for people to be reading it soon. It was a real step outside of comfort zone creatively; it’s weird and knotty and dreamy and horny. I really think you’re going to like it.

Anyway: book preorders are really important! It’s way above my pay grade, but they determine all sorts of meaningful stuff like print run, placement in stores, media coverage, etc etc etc. It would mean a lot if you would, or hell even if you told a friend! Get your local library to buy a copy! This thing is so close to my heart. Thanks.

MARCH EVENTS

3/15: MoCCA Arts Fest! I’ll be at table 148 all weekend – at the Metropolitan Pavilion (125 W 18th St). I’m also on a panel at noon Saturday (panels are at the SVA Flatiron Gallery at 133 West 21st Street):

New York City: History, Fantasy, and Reality
Many New Yorks exist simultaneously: the New York of the past, storied and romantic. The modern fantasy of New York is fueled by television and movies, iconic in its promise of excitement and personal adventure. And then there is reality. In Amalgam, Frances Jetter traces her ancestors’ immigrant journey through the city. In This Beautiful, Ridiculous City, Kay Sohini compares her expectations with the city she encountered as a more recent arrival. In her graphic novel Simplicity, Mattie Lubchansky imagines the city’s possible dystopic future. Comics Beat Editor-in-Chief Heidi MacDonald will ask them all if they still heart New York.

3/5: Two Truths and a Lie Launch, POWERHOUSE Arena. Excited to moderate this talk about a fun book out next week!

stranger in a familiar land corner

This month’s Corner Corner is about a little trip i took! So I’ve been going to New Orleans with some frequency for about 20 years at this point, and I’ve got a huge network of friends and now family that live down there, and truly love it. And so we took one of bi-ish-yearly trips down this past weekend for some carnival stuff – the weekend before Mardi Gras weekend. it’s weird to be a tourist in a place you know so well – especially in a place that is so overrun with some of the worst-behaved tourists on planet Earth. (It’s somewhere for people in this rotten country to be The Ugly American but without needing a passport.) I find myself trying to signal to locals that I know my way around, and that i’m not like the other girls, but who knows if that’s even worse. I’ve noticed a tendency lately for a sort of Disney Adultification of the other out-of-towners I meet there, where they want to share with you the secret spots only they know about, or their little vacation hacks. All the while, they do tend to forget that it’s a real city with real people in it, not an amusement park. (living in a similarly tourist-infested place I am often feeling a lot of solidarity in this regard.)

I always strive to be a traveler and not a tourist, if that’s a distinction with any difference. I’m not trying to be smug about it. Just hoping that everyone (and myself really), treats anywhere else they go like they’re in a friend’s house. Like, it’s nice to be there and maybe you don’t have to pour your own wine for a few hours, but someone lives there.

I was going to talk about sandwiches again, and feeling restored, but I guess this turned into a little rant. Anyway, after maybe a decade of dithering I finally committed to the “James Brown” at Parkway over my beloved surf-n-turf, and did not regret the decision. New Orleans, I love you, see you soon. I’m still not going to say y’all.