Charis welcomes Eliot Duncan in conversation with Davey Davis for a celebration of Ponyboy: A Novel, an evocative debut novel of trans-masculinity, addiction, and the pain and joy of becoming.

In the first of three acts, Ponyboy’s titular narrator—a pill-popping, speed-snorting trans-masculine lightning bolt—unravels in his Paris apartment. Ponyboy is caught in a messy love triangle with Baby, a lesbian painter who can’t see herself being with someone trans, and Toni, a childhood friend who can actually see Ponyboy for who he is. Strung out, Ponyboy follows Baby to Berlin in act two, where he sinks deeper into drugs and falls for Gabriel, all the while pursued by a megalomaniacal photographer hungry for the next hot thing. As Ponyboy’s relationships crumble, he overdoses and find himself alone in his childhood home in Iowa. The novel’s final act follows Ponyboy to rehab, exploring the ways in which trans identity, addiction, and recovery reforge the bond between mother and child. Eliot Duncan reveals, in precise atmospheric prose reminiscent of Anne Carson and Allen Ginsberg, the innate splendor, joy, and ache of becoming oneself.

Eliot Duncan is a US-born writer and artist. He is the cofounder of the international queer collective Slanted House and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in London.

Davey Davis is the author of the novels the earthquake room and X. They write a weekly newsletter about art, culture, and sexuality at itsdavid.substack.com. They live in Brooklyn.

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Ponyboy: Eliot Duncan in conversation with Davey Davis