Book Event: Beloved Disciples by Mario Elías

" Beloved Disciples is an affecting novel about intense grief in which a man pays homage to his lost and greatest love." -Natalie Wollenzien

A dazzling gay love story where devotion sparkles in memory, obsession dances on the edge of reality, and a young man discovers the power of first love.

Simón fell in love the first night he stepped into the only gay club in his unnamed coastal hometown. Albi fell too, despite Simón's quirks--the way he blinks to capture a memory, the way his hands fly when he talks, his inescapable toomuchness. Their first kiss comes on the beach, beneath mango trees. Blink. A season on their secret shore. Blink. The hidden garden Albi tends behind the rectory. Blink. Candles on a coconut cake for his twenty-sixth birthday. Blink. Blink. Blink.

But when Albi dies unexpectedly, Simón is left wandering in memories that feel more alive than the present. Friends and family--his Tía Cachita, best friend Lenita, and estranged mother--come to pull him back. He must choose: remain faithful to a love that haunts him, or rebuild a world without Albi.

With prose "that reverberates with heartfelt intensity, blurring the line between the erotic and the tender, the dreamlike and the real" (Saleem Haddad, Guapa), Elías' debut novel celebrates the intensity of first love, the endurance of devotion, and the search for found family.

Mario Elías is a multidisciplinary artist of Cuban and Syrian descent based in Chicago. His work spans fiction, nonfiction, photography, painting, and printmaking, often exploring themes of identity, memory, and cultural inheritance. His book Queering the Male Gaze reimagined masterpieces of the classical and modern canon through essays and self-portraiture, giving voice to the often-overlooked queer and female figures who shaped them. He is the founder of The KindaSuper Project, a philanthropic initiative offering free photography and video services to underserved communities. Beloved Disciples is his first novel.

Jan Rattia is a Caracas-born artist and educator whose work examines belonging, representation, and otherness through contemporary photography and installation. Working across figuration, domestic interiors, and the landscape, his practice explores how images construct relational meaning—how they circulate, accumulate, and attach to specific histories and places. Rooted in personal narrative and cultural displacement, his work proposes a fluid understanding of home while critically engaging the aesthetic and political inheritances of the medium. Rattia stu ied at Bard College–International Center of Photography and Pratt Institute in New York, where he later served as Visiting Assistant Professor from 2021 to 2024. His work has been exhibited, published, and collected internationally, with solo exhibitions in New York, Houston, and Philadelphia, and is held in public and private collections, including the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. He is currently based in Chicago.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are strongly encouraged. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you need a seat reserved for you for accessibility, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com by no later than 14 days before the event. For scholarship tickets or other access needs please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.