Join First Light Books for pub day with Lauren Hough, whose new book follows her and a dog named Woody Guthrie on a cross-country road trip through an America that most of us never slow down long enough to see.‍

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Monster of a Land is funny, searing, and deeply human. It's a portrait of this country from gas stations and auto shops and dive bars, told by someone who knows what it means to exist on the margins.‍

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"Monster of a Land is so much more than a road trip book—it’s about the trips we never take, the people we lose before we get the chance, and what happens when you finally get in the goddamn car.” —Jennette McCurdy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Half His Age and I’m Glad My Mom Died​

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She'll be joined in conversation by Lucas Schaefer, author of the national bestseller The Slip, and Greg Marshall, author of the Lambda Literary Award finalist Leg. All three are Austin-based writers and longtime friends.

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A reception with the author will take place from 6:00 to 6:30 PM, followed by the conversation at 6:30 PM and a signing to close the evening. Tickets include a copy of the book and a reserved seat. Unreserved seats are available on a first come, first served basis. Free RSVPs are also encouraged.

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About the book

Lauren Hough has always been haunted by the road trips she never got to take: no money, no vacation days, no car capable of making the trip. So, upon finally finding herself in a situation where such a trip might be possible, she leaps at the chance, refurbishing a ramshackle 2001 Dodge van and setting off from Austin, Texas with her Husky mix Woody by her side.

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Her influences feel obvious, but a lot has changed about the United States since the 1962 trip John Steinbeck chronicles in Travels with Charley. Even better as a social lubricant than beer, a dog is the ultimate conversation starter. With Woody as wingman, Lauren chats at gas stations and restaurants and auto shops and bars with an incredible cross-section of Americans from all walks of life and every possible political perspective. And as she circumnavigates the country, she documents, with all-too-rare empathy, what it means to be poor, to be marginalized, and to be seen as Other in America.

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Part travelogue, part social commentary, and 100% Lauren Hough, Monster of a Land unites her poignant vulnerability, her hilarious narrative voice, and her razor-sharp insights into a journey that will show us how far we've come as a country, and how far we still have to go.

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About the author

Lauren Hough was born in Germany and raised in seven countries, and West Texas. She's been an Air Force airman, a bartender, a bouncer, a construction laborer, a driver, a green-aproned barista, and a cable guy.

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She is the author of the New York Times bestselling essay collection Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing, which Cate Blanchett called a work of "hypnotic power." Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, Texas Highways, HuffPost, and The Guardian. She is a writer at large for Texas Highways.

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She lives in Austin with a dog named Woody Guthrie.

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About the conversation partners

Lucas Schaefer is the author of The Slip, a national bestseller published by Simon & Schuster that was named one of the Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2025 and a Kirkus Prize finalist. Set in 1990s Austin and centered on a boxing gym, The Slip was praised by The New York Times as "wildly ambitious and immensely rewarding" and compared by NPR to the work of John Irving and Nathan Hill. His fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, The Baffler, and Slate. He holds an MFA from the New Writers Project at UT-Austin and lives in Austin.

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Greg Marshall is the author of Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It, a memoir about family, disability, and coming of age in two closets: as a gay man and as a man living with cerebral palsy. Leg was a Lambda Literary Award finalist, an NPR Books We Love selection, and was named to the Washington Post's 50 Best Nonfiction of 2023. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Prose and a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at UT-Austin, Marshall's work has appeared in The Best American Essays. He lives in Austin.

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