Endpapers

It’s 2003, and artist Dawn Levit is stuck. A bookbinder who works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she spends all day repairing old books but hasn't created anything of her own in years—and with nothing ready to show at her major gallery debut in six weeks, time is of the essence. What's more, although she doesn't have a word for it yet, Dawn is genderqueer and she's struggling to feel safe expressing herself.

One day at work, Dawn discovers something hidden under the endpapers of an old book: the torn-off corner of a 1950s lesbian pulp novel, with an illustration of a woman looking into a mirror and seeing a man's face. Even more intriguing is the queer love letter written on the back. Dawn becomes obsessed with tracking down the author of the letter, convinced the mysterious writer can help her find a place in the world and also solve the trickiest puzzle of all: how she truly wants to live her life.

A sharply written, evocative debut, Endpapers is both a page-turning bookish mystery and an unforgettable story about the journey toward authenticity and the hard conversations we owe ourselves in pursuit of a world where no one has to hide. 

Jennifer Savran Kelly (she/her/they/them) lives in Ithaca, New York, where she writes, binds books, and works as a production editor at Cornell University Press. Endpapers is her debut novel. In 2018 it won a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. In 2019 it was selected as a finalist for the SFWP Literary Awards program and for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Her short fiction has appeared in Hobart, Black Warrior Review, Green Mountains Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts (Online Companion), and elsewhere. In 2014, she was selected to study in the Writer to Writer Mentorship Program of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.