MEET ME AT THE CREEK is a messy, honest, beautiful coming of-age story about being gay in a small conservative town, being in love with your childhood best friend, and forging your path in the world, no matter how hard the decisions may be. this book is going to help so many people, and i can't wait for it to land in the hands of those who need it.

intimacies sits in the middle of katie kitamura's latest 'trilogy' of novels: a series of three books that each follow an unnamed female narrator whose profession exists in the liminal spaces between people and their communications. while her latest novel, audition, follows an actress and her earlier novel, a separation, follows a literary translator, intimacies follows an interpreter at the international criminal court in the hague, whose personal and professional lives are intertwined and upended by the complexities of her life and work.

kitamura's clever, straightforward prose is sharp as a knife, and she writes about the interiority of the human experience with an honest intimacy that leaves me consistently breathless. as the interpreter acclimates to her new home in the hague, her blossoming friendships and relationships are thrown into violent contrast with her job, where she witnesses and interprets for war criminals whose atrocities challenge the kind of stable, beautiful life she's trying to build. as her situations unfold, we're given a front row seat to the harrowing turmoil that comes with being alive and witnessing both the beauty and wickedness of the world in equal measures. intimacies is an absolutely gorgeous story of human connection that is both deceptively quiet and distressingly loud as the narrator tries to find a place that feels like home.

it's a mark of a truly special author when you close their book and find yourself looking at the world and those around you in a sacred, revealing light, and kitamura is an author who's left me changed with both novels i've read. it's one thing to experience the warm gratitude of finding an author and their work when you need it, but it's damn near miraculous to live in a time where you can give that author their flowers for it. if you've been following me recently, you've undoubtedly seen me sing the praises of audition, and now i'm tapping in to tell you that intimacies​ is just as astonishing. kitamura's work has garnered significant praise, being nominated for such prestigious awards as the pulitzer prize, the booker prize, and the pen/faulkner award, to name a few, so while you certainly don't need me to convince you of her merit, adding my voice to the choir is the least i can do.

if you need me, i'll be following katie kitamura anywhere she wants to go.