Housemates Paperback by Emma Copley Eisenberg

Product Details

• Publisher: Hogarth (2025-05-27)
• Language: English
• Pages: 384
• ISBN-13: 9780593242254
• Weight: 260.82 grams
• Dimensions: 20.14 x 13.03 x 1.98 cm

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Two young housemates embark on a road trip to discover themselves in this “exceptional, keenly observed meditation on art and love” (People) in a fractured America, by the award-winning author of The Third Rainbow Girl

“Tender, nuanced, and hilarious.”—Oprah Daily
15 LGBTQ+ Books to Read for Pride—Time

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: People, The Boston Globe, NBC, Them, Autostraddle, Electric Lit, Kirkus Reviews

This Random House Book Club edition includes a Q&A with Torrey Peters and a discussion guide.

What does it feel like, standing in the moments that will mark your life?

When Bernie replies to Leah’s ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a mutual belief in their art, and one another. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography.

After Bernie’s former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania, turning the jaunt into a road trip with an ambitious mission: to document America through words and photographs.

What ensues is a journey into the heart of the nation, bringing the housemates into conversation with people from all walks of life—“the absurd dreamers and failures of this wide, wide country”—as they try to make sense of the times they are living in. Along the way, Leah and Bernie discover what it means to chase their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace what they are capable of both romantically and artistically.

Warm and insightful, Housemates is a story of youth and freedom—a glorious celebration of queer life, and how art and love might save us all.

About the Author

Emma Copley Eisenberg is a queer writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her first book, The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, was named a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Award, among other honors. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, McSweeney’s, VQR, American Short Fiction, and other publications. Raised in New York City, she lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts.