Carry the Dog

“WITTY, STARTLINGLY ASTUTUE." —People

Bea Seger has spent a lifetime running from her childhood. The daughter of a famous photographer, she and her brothers were the subjects of an explosive series of images in the 1960s known as the Marx Nudes. Disturbing and provocative, the photographs shadowed the family long past the public outcry and media attention. Now, decades later, both the Museum of Modern Art and Hollywood have come calling, eager to cash in on Bea’s mother’s notoriety. Twice divorced from but still entangled with aging rock star Gary Going, Bea lives in Manhattan with her borrowed dog, Dory, and sort-of sister, Echo. After years of avoiding her past, Bea must make a choice: let the world in—and be compensated for the trauma of her childhood—or leave it all locked away in a storage unit forever.

Carry the Dog sweeps readers into Bea’s world as the little girl in the photographs and the woman in the mirror meet at the blurry intersection of memory and truth, vulnerability and resilience.

Stephanie Gangi is a poet, essayist, and novelist. Her award-winning poem, “Four,” was published in the Hippocratic Prize Anthology. Her acclaimed debut novel, The Next, was a finalist in the Writers@Work Annual Writing Competition. Her essays have been published in Literary Hub, Catapult, The Woolfer, Bust, TueNight, and NextTribe. Gangi wrote the first draft of Carry the Dog at the Leopardi Writing Conference in Recanati, Italy, after winning the Jeannine Cooney Scholarship for Excellence in Fiction. She lives in New York City.