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Charlie Porter launches Nova Scotia House at Ursula Bookshop
To celebrate the US publication of Charlie Porter’s Nova Scotia House, please join us at Ursula Bookshop for a conversation between novelists Charlie Porter and Eliot Duncan, presented with Nightboat Books.
Intimate, visionary, and profoundly original—as well as raw, hot, and hilarious—Nova Scotia House marks the debut of a vibrant new voice in contemporary fiction. In this profound meditation on grief, Johnny Grant looks back at his relationship with his life partner, Jerry Field, after his AIDS-related death. When they met, nearly thirty years ago, Johnny was 19, Jerry was 45. They made a life on their own terms in Jerry’s flat: 1, Nova Scotia House. Johnny is still there today—but Jerry is gone, and so is the world they knew.
As Johnny’s mind travels between then and now, he begins to remember stories of Jerry’s youth: of experiments in living; of radical philosophies; of the many possibilities of love, sex and friendship before the AIDS crisis devastated the queer community. Slowly, he realizes what he must do next—and attempts to restore ways of being that could be lost forever.
Hilton Als writes, “Nova Scotia House is an extraordinary work of the imagination . . . There is so much heart and longing in it that fills my soul.”
Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
Eliot Duncan is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Truman Capote Fellow. Ponyboy (2023), his debut novel, was the first book with a trans protagonist to be nominated for the National Book Award. He teaches the workshop “Exquisite Love: Madness as Divinity through Literature.” He lives in New York City.