First Light welcomes Sarah Wang to Austin to celebrate New Skin, a scalding, darkly humorous debut following an enmeshed mother-daughter duo, both best friends and enemies, and the plastic surgery addiction that warps their lives into a perilous spiral.

The event will begin with an author reception from 6–6:30 p.m., followed by a conversation with author Jenny Tinghui Zhang. 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

“New Skin is a marvel. Mirthfully and mercilessly abject, New Skin is a page-turner that feels equal parts cinematic romp and serrated analysis of some of the most important issues of our day: immigration, assimilation, debt, intergenerational suffering, self-immolation, and the possibilities for repair. A truly original debut from a seriously intelligent writer.”

-Maggie Nelson, author of Like Love and The Argonauts

At twenty-six, Linli Feng is still trying to escape her mother Fanny’s orbit. But after three years of estrangement, just when Linli has been accepted into a prestigious graduate program, she is dragged back by Fanny’s latest medical catastrophe and forced to return home.

For decades, Fanny has been addicted to plastic surgery, getting bargain procedures in the basements of LA’s bootleg beauty industry. Now Fanny’s disfigured face is in dangerous revolt, infected and collapsing yet again from black-market injectables.

But even as Linli wades through the wreck of family finances and juggles her mother’s medical care, Fanny has another secret in store. Fanny has won a spot on America’s Beauty Extreme, a reality television competition in which botched plastic surgery addicts compete for reconstructive surgery as riveted audiences tune in. When Linli attempts to rescue Fanny from the sinister subculture that has already claimed her mother’s face, she must at last confront the corrosive reality of the American dream success that is at the fraught heart of their relationship.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Sarah Wang Sarah Wang is the author of New Skin (Little, Brown 2026). She has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, Harper’s Bazaar, n+1, McSweeney’s, and BOMB, among other publications. Wang is a NYSCA/NYFA Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellow, the winner of a Barbara Deming Award, and a finalist for the Nelson Algren Prize. She teaches writing at Barnard College and lives in New York City.

She will be joined in conversation by Jenny Tinghui Zhang, author of the novels Superfan and Four Treasures of the Sky, named an Idaho Book of the Year and short- and long-listed for the Chautauqua Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her work has appeared in The Cut, Foreign Policy, Texas Highways, and elsewhere, and she is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree.

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