The State of the Literary It Girl

A girl escapes the downtown gauntlet only to find herself back in town, quietly rage-addled at a dinner party on the Bowery. Another scene-entrenched girl survives the Adderall shortage, only to make an SOS call from inside the house she’s been squatting in and ends up attempting a sort of prayer, palms upturned before an ATM in the gloaming. Another flees freelance hell for an ostensibly utopian commune in the Midwest, which turns out to be riddled with demons that promise trans girls revenge bodies and book deals, for the low price of their agency (who needs it when you can have an agent?). Two aspiring artists embark on heroine’s journeys straight into the bowels of downtown Manhattan (with a pit stop at Bard, obviously). A mother raises a daughter, tracing the tributaries of her family’s Southern past as she plants roots in the buckling New York concrete.