Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

"In these irreverent pages, a shapeshifter gets a crash course in gender and sexuality by inhabiting both sides of the binary and arriving precisely somewhere in the middle." —O, The Oprah Magazine

“HOT” (Maggie Nelson) • “TIGHT” (Eileen Myles) • “DEEP” (Michelle Tea)

It's 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flaneur with a rich dating life. But Paul's also got a secret: he's a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Paul transforms his body and his gender at will as he crossed the country––a journey and adventure through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his/her way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening into an array of intimacy and connections.

Andrea Lawlor teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College and edits fiction for Fence. They live in western Massachusetts. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is their first novel.