Hilary Leichter: Temporary

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Temporary casts a hilarious and tender eye toward the struggle for happiness under late capitalism. A young woman fills increasingly bizarre placements in the search for steadiness and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.”

“In Temporary, the quest for gainful employment is epic; operatic; deliciously, sunnily, terrifyingly entertaining. Hilary Leichter is a conjurer of rare talent.” —Kelly Link

“A brisk, wildly imaginative first novel. . . . Leichter’s deeper interest is in mining how transient, insecure work inflects our private life–if it even permits a private life. Can we afford to stop working? Do we remember how?”  —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

Hilary Leichter will be in conversation with Dennis Norris II, author of  Awst Collection—Dennis Norris II.

Hilary Leichter’s debut novel Temporary was a finalist for Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2020. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Harper’s, n+1, Bookforum, Conjunctions, The Cut, and American Short Fiction. She teaches at Columbia University.

Check out Temporary at Ampersand Books

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