PEN/America Award winner, 2021 Guggenheim fellow, and beloved literary and tarot icon, Michelle Tea will be at The Garden District Book Shop for a lively evening celebrating her latest work Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of My (In)Fertility,  the hilarious, powerfully written, taboo-breaking story of her journey to pregnancy and motherhood as a 40 year-old, queer, uninsured woman.

The event is free and open to the public. Copies of Knocking Myself Up will be available for purchase at The Garden District Book Shop.  The event will begin at 6:00 PM with a welcome reception followed by a discussion between Tea and Fallon Young, executive director of the New Orleans Film Society. The two will walk guests through the highs and lows of Tea’s fertility journey. Afterwards, Tea will be available to mingle with guests and  personalize books. 

Written in intimate, gleeful, TMI prose, Knocking Myself Up is the irreverent account of Tea’s route to parenthood—with a group of ride-or-die friends, a generous drag queen, and a whole lot of can-do pluck. Along the way she falls in love with a wholesome genderqueer a decade her junior, attempts biohacking herself a baby with black market fertility meds (and magicking herself an offspring with witch-enchanted honey), learns her eggs are busted, and enters the Fertility Industrial Complex in order to carry her younger lover’s baby.

With the signature sharp wit and wild heart that have made her a favorite to so many, Tea guides readers through the maze of medical procedures, frustrations, and astonishments on the path to getting pregnant, wryly critiquing some of the systems that facilitate that choice. Tea has crafted a deeply entertaining and profound memoir, a testament to the power of love and family-making, however complex our lives may be, to transform and enrich us.

All citywide-mandated COVID safety protocols will be in place.