FAMOUS MEN forthcoming July 14.

COVER COMING SOON. Preorder here.

From the acclaimed author of the “wild, gorgeous” (San Francisco Chronicle) Marlena comes a novel about a young woman looking for a father and finding herself—a vivid, uncompromising exploration of sex, money, power, and art.

The right book at the right time can change your life.

Will Miles is trapped. Trapped in tiny Greening, Michigan, where a toxic high school rumor has turned her into a social exile. Trapped in the predictable routines of her mother, and under the unrelenting gaze of her mother’s increasingly sinister boyfriend. But when Will stumbles across the early poems of Nathaniel Fellow, a famous writer forty years her senior who also grew up in Greening, she feels she’s found a kindred spirit. A passing comment from her mother only adds to Will’s fascination: Is Nathaniel the father she’s never known?

Will orchestrates a plan to track Nathaniel down, following in his footsteps to New York City, where she learns he’s not the answer to her past, not the way she imagined. But their meeting sparks a complicated, consuming relationship that gives Will sidelong access to a world she’s only ever imagined: of writers and intellectuals, a financial safety net, and, most intoxicatingly, a glimpse into her own potential. But who is Nathaniel Fellow, off the page? And what will shaping her life to suit his cost her? When a torrent of information about his past threatens not just her life with Nathaniel, but the story she tells herself about him, Will is faced with a choice that will change everything.

A gripping novel about ambition, parents and children, and all the ways women still pay for men’s mistakes, Famous Men traces one woman’s journey to the truth of where she comes from, what she’s capable of, and how she might start again.

Praise for Famous Men

 “Famous Men renders womanhood with unsettling clarity, and reckons with the absolute ache of becoming. It is a lacerating capture of ambition, a study of what art costs and who gets paid. With a spectral light, it dwells in the charged spaces between artist and audience, patron and prey, and lover and father. Famous Men is haunting and knife-bright.” —Kiley Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age

“Famous Men is a masterful portrayal--of a girl grasping for power and significance, of the slow creep of an older man testing boundaries, of a young woman realizing the scope of what's been done. Yes, this is a story of complicity and harm, but it takes risks where other narratives would not dare. By aiming beyond buzzwords, Buntin delivers an immersive page-turner that has guts and heart and an honesty that is a privilege to read. This is a beautiful, generous, unsparing novel. Buntin is one of our best.” —Kate Elizabeth Russell, bestselling author of My Dark Vanessa

“A superb writer in full and exquisite command of her craft, Julie Buntin tells a tale here like no other. Famous Men is the story of a young woman who wants to remake herself in the mold of her idol—a story of sex, art, ambition, and compromise that is both deeply discomfiting and unbelievably compelling. Even as it holds a magnifying mirror up to our flaws, we cannot, we do not want to, look away.” —Julia Phillips, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth

“Fellow Marlena diehards, rejoice! The peerless storytelling of Julie Buntin has returned to explore the complexities of influence. A coming to New York story, but more importantly a coming to one's self story, Famous Men is an unforgettable portrait of one of those radiant chapters in a young artist’s life that leaves a mark forever. Compassionate, bracing, and wise, these characters will linger in your mind long after the final page.” —Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Beautyland 

“As much as any book I can recall, Famous Men captures the sometimes volatile intimacy of the creative writing classroom, the way in which the student—not just their work, but their hopes, their dreams, their very selfhood—is at best the subtext, at worst the subject of appraisal. The taut, fraught dynamic that results between Will and Nathaniel is as riveting as any thriller in its dark descent, but the real drama here—as nuanced as it is unsettling—is less one of victimhood than complicity. Famous Men reveals the art monster in all of us and affirms Buntin's place among the essential writers of her generation.” —Peter Ho Davies, author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself