Thursday, June 4 2026 7PM
828 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Join us for a release event with notable writer Alex DiFrancesco, discussing his new book The Grief Shop. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.
Can’t make the event? Purchase a signed copy of The Grief Shop here.
ACCESSIBILITY:
Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator.
ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at events@strandbooks.com by May 20 to request.
Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.
For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact events@strandbooks.com
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From the author of Transmutation comes a linked collection of speculative short fiction following a woman who navigates surreal jobs in a near-future dystopia, where people have become completely numb to their emotions following a cataclysmic event.
The Grief Shop and Other Stories from a Broken World takes place after “the tragedy” transforms everyone into unfeeling people. At the center of the book is Gemma, who must cope with attempting to feel in light of the numbness. She works a series of jobs—at a grief-infused coffee shop, a boxing gym for pain therapy, a graveyard, and more—encountering a range of eccentric characters struggling to survive in a world where grief, ecstasy, suffering, and joy are commodities for some to purchase and for others to exploit. Gemma’s path is one of glimmering possibilities, ones with feelings she may not understand or accept.
The Grief Shop dares to wonder: how do we tell the story of being human when the very things that make us human have been stripped away from us?
Alex DiFrancesco is the author of the dystopian novel All City, the story collection reflecting trans realities Transmutation, and the memoir Breaking the Curse (2024). About their debut story collection, Patrick Cottrell wrote in the New York Times: “At the affective core of Transmutation is the question of how we can offer shelter for one another’s pain, real and imagined.” They are the winner of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for 2022, and their novel All City was the first awards finalist by a transgender author for the Ohioana Book Awards in its eighty-year history. They served as an assistant editor for Sundress Publications in Tennessee, and edited LGBTQIA+ non-fiction for Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Their work has appeared in Tin House, Electric Literature, Pacific Standard, Eater, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn, among others. DiFrancesco lives in Philadelphia.