Ladies Who Lit at The Hoxton, Chicago: Sugar, Baby by Celine Saintclare

Join Ladies Who Lit in The Apartment at The Hoxton, Chicago for a discussion of Celine Saintclare's debut novel, Sugar, Baby, and hang with our growing LWL community.

Complimentary beer & wine + NA beverage options will be provided.

ABOUT THE BOOK: Sugar, Baby

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2024 BY VOGUE, ELLE, NYLON, NPR, PURE WOW, SHONDALAND, BOOK RIOT and more!
In the vein of Luster and Queenie, an unflinching portrayal of high-paid sex work in the age of the internet-an intoxicating, bold debut from a dazzling new voice.

Sugar, Baby follows Agnes, a mixed-race 21-year-old whose life seems to be heading nowhere. Still living at home, she works as a cleaner and spends all her money in clubs on the weekends searching for distractions from her mundane life. That is until she meets Emily, daughter of one of her cleaning clients, who lives in London and works as a model . . . and a sugar baby, dating rich older men for money.

Emily's life is the escape Agnes has been longing for-extravagant tasting menus, champagne on tap, glamorous hotels with unlimited room service, designer gifts from dates who call her beautiful. But this new lifestyle is the last straw for her religious mother Constance.

Kicked out of her family home, Agnes moves in with Emily and the other sugar babies in their fancy London flat and is drawn deeper and deeper into their world. But these women come from money: they possess a safety net Agnes does not. And as she is thrown from one precarious relationship to the next-a married man who wants to show off the glamourous, exotic girl on his arm; a Russian billionaire's wife who makes Agnes central to a sex party in Miami-she finds herself searching for fulfillment just as desperately as she was before.

A compelling journey of self-discovery that offers sharp commentary on race, beauty, and class, Sugar, Baby is an electric, original, spellbinding novel that will keep readers turning the pages until the very end.

Please consider purchasing your copy of Sugar, Baby through LWL's Bookshop.org affiliate link. Shopping through Bookshop.org is an easy, convenient way to get your books & support independent bookstores while also supporting future LWL programming. Thanks :)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Celine Saintclare, described as ‘one to watch’ by Publisher’s Weekly, is a Buckinghamshire based author of English and Caribbean descent. She is motivated to write as a way of exploring the complexities of her own identity and to tell stories about society’s transgressors. She has written for VOGUE magazine and her debut novel Sugar,Baby has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, NPR, ELLE magazine, gal-dem, and reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.

ABOUT LADIES WHO LIT

Ladies Who Lit is a Chicago-based book club celebrating writing by women. The LWL community is open to all, and book discussions serve as the jumping off point for nuanced conversation about the female experience and how it is reflected not only in literature, but contemporary culture at large..

LWL is so pleased to be partnering with The Hoxton for its 2024 quarterly programming. LWL events at The Hoxton are meant to serve as both an introduction to LWL programming and our growing community.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Kaylen Ralph is a freelance writer and journalist working at the intersection of arts, culture and commerce in Chicago. She is the founder and moderator of Ladies Who Lit, an events-focused book club celebrating writing by women. Throughout her decade-long freelance journalism career, Kaylen has contributed to Teen Vogue, Glamour, Elle, Refinery29, Literary Hub and the Chicago Reader, among other print and digital outlets. She is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism In 2013, she co-founded The Riveter magazine, a longform women’s print and digital magazine and she is the co-editor of New Stories We Tell: True Tales By America's New Generation of Great Women Journalists, an anthology of longform journalism featuring contemporary writing, published by The Sager Group in October 2019. Raised in Rockford, IL, Kaylen currently calls Chicago home.