In-Store: Bex Frankeberger: Antigone at the Rot Party w/ Molly McGhee

“In this glorious refrain, Bex Frankeberger cast a spell on their reader that slices across times and genre." —Samantha Hunt

Event guidelines:

• Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 donation to PCRF.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/SOUPg41y9Fk
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.

A mysterious invitation slides under the door. Antigone opens it, holds it to the light, tries to discern its color, wonders about its faint scent of decay. But there is no mistake: she has been invited to the Rot Party. The question is: who will join her?

Antigone at the Rot Party is a post-modern translation of a pre-modern classic, asking age-old questions with new fervor and wit. What do we owe the dead? Can we be brave enough to act in their memory? Can we be brave enough to love?

Bex Frankeberger’s debut—kind of a play, kind of a novel—filters Antigone through queer theory and contemporary philosophy, bringing us uncannily close to the perennial nature of power and hubris. Against both, it jolts us to recognize that principled defiance is still the most potent, and timeless, of antidotes.

You are cordially invited to join Antigone at the Rot Party.

Bex Frankeberger is a writer. Antigone at the Rot Party is their first novel. They were a 2024-2025 McCormack Writing Center Reading Fellow and their work has been published here and there, including Mizna and DizzyTV. Raised in southern California, they often reside elsewhere.

Molly McGhee is a novelist from Nashville, Tennessee, living in Brooklyn, New York. She is the Undergraduate Creative Writing Advisor in Fiction at Columbia University. Her work has appeared in publications such as McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Paris Review, and The Guardian, among others. Her novel, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novel award and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.