In her debut work of literary horror, Katie (HarperCollins, 2027), Associate Professor of Writing Dorothea Lasky follows a young New Yorker whose decision to become a surrogate mother draws her into a dangerous, possibly demonic world. Exploring the intersection of reproductive desire, financial insecurity, and manipulation, the novel turns an opportunity for a fresh start into mounting dread. Katie will be published on August 3, 2027.
Katie spends her days moving between low-paying temporary jobs while struggling to conceive with her husband, Theo, a law student whose enthusiasm for parenthood does not match her own. When a visit to a fertility clinic brings an offer of six-figure compensation, she agrees to carry a child for an unknown family, despite Theo’s objections.
But the money is only part of the clinic’s appeal. Katie soon falls under the influence of its charming and mysterious founder, Dr. John Westenson, and his coven of assistants. Burdened by guilt from her childhood, she becomes increasingly vulnerable to their manipulation, even as their intentions remain obscure.
Writing in the tradition of Carrie and The Exorcist, Lasky brings her poetic sensibility to a surreal story of bodily vulnerability and uncertain agency. As Katie’s hopes become entangled with the clinic’s hidden purposes, the novel asks what might lurk beneath the promise of care.
Katie is available for preorder here.
Lasky is the author of Animal (Wave Books, 2019), ROME (W. W. Norton/Liveright, 2014), and Milk (2018), Thunderbird (2012), Black Life (2010), and AWE (2007), all published by Wave Books. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and Boston Review, among other publications. She is also the co-editor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (McSweeney’s) and a Bagley Wright Lecturer on Poetry. She holds a doctorate in creativity and education from the University of Pennsylvania.
