the book is out omg

our book has been out for one full week and so much has happened. I think I am supposed to feel nervous but it’s honestly been one long party, and I have had my film camera on me the whole week:

🍋 Alastair Sooke said the book was ‘excoriating and exuberant.’ You can read the full Telegraph interview here. He said Zarina was cautious and he said I was impish, which … yeah okay fair. here is a picture during hair and makeup because they sent hair and makeup before the photoshoot to CLEAN US UP !

🍋 We got to visit Penguin HQ and met a real life penguin. We got given tote bags and told to take as many books as we wanted, and everyone we met was really excited for the book, and it made me want to work there lol

🍋 This is a picture of Zarina and our publicist Lotte waiting outside a recording booth for Radio Five Live where we spoke to Naga Munchetty about why everyone deserves to quit their jobs and become artists. It was broadcast here at the 1hr 46 minute mark. When we were sitting outside the booth, I had Poor Artists on my knee and someone said Oh I’ve seen that book everywhere! and it was so nice to say WE WROTE IT and to be there with Lotte whose job is to get the book everywhere haha

🍋 This was my first time seeing the book in a shop! in the big Foyles on charring cross road. the real story is that the book wasn’t on the shelves because it had sold out, so a very nice staff member ran to get the pre-orders and put them here so i could take a picture which – that’s an even better story and i will remember it forever

🍋 and then it was time to launch the book! which we did at London Review Bookshop in conversation with Olivia Sudjic. and this is what I mean when I say it felt like a party. Zarina’s mum gave us flowers! Penguin gave us flowers! A friend brought us two badges with the word Pube on them! I saw sick friends, internet friends, school friends, old teachers, old bosses, new people I’d never met before, old readers who I recognised from their profile pictures. When the talk was over – a talk that will go out on the LRB podcast at some point – I asked the audience if I could take a picture and I love this soooooo much you have no idea:

🍋 We got to sign books for LRB! who, for the record, were so lovely. did you know: you have to use a new signature so people can’t rob your old one. Well, about half an hour before this event I sat in a LEON coming up with new signatures on a napkin. And then when it came time to write it in real life books people had bought for, sometimes I accidentally did my actual signature. 9 times out of 10 I did my funny new one. But lol @ me doxxing myself out of tiredness

🍋 those flowers off Zarina’s Mum and the ones from Penguin too. It was funny getting on the train back to Liverpool with so many flowers. I felt great. You know, the day after the launch I decided I think it was the happiest I’d ever been. My boyfriend said I was drunk with seratonin after I told someone on the tube I liked their jacket in the middle of the day. To be fair, it was a bomber jacket covered in Lana Del Rey’s album covers. But idk, i’m still buzzing.

🍋 And then, I came home. I couldn’t get out of bed from the fatigue (but I was so happy i wasn’t bothered) and then when I was able, I got a bus into town to see if it was in the Waterstones here in the city centre. I knew it was tbf, my cousins had already sent me a picture but then I needed to see it with my own eyes aaaand –

It feels like a heist to have been writing texts on this website for 9 years and for that to end up here, irl, printed-out, in the big serious shops, reviewed by the big serious newspapers, interviewed by the big serious bbc. It really is so novel. And it feels cheeky, because so much of the book is about undermining the power of these industries to make way for a fairer world. Feels like a big game of knock-a-door-dash hehehehe I’m so happy!!!