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A Good Happy Girl
Additional information
| Author | Marissa Higgins |
|---|---|
| Release Date | April 2, 2024 |
| Genre | Literary Fiction |
| Publisher | Catapult |
| Tags | Queer |
Description
A poignant, surprising, and immersive read about a young professional woman pursuing an emotionally intense relationship with a married lesbian couple, for readers of Kristen Arnett and Melissa Broder
Helen, a jittery attorney with a self-destructive streak, is secretly reeling from a disturbing crime of neglect that her parents recently committed. Historically happy to compartmentalize—distracting herself by hooking up with lesbian couples, doting on her grandmother, and flirting with a young administrative assistant—Helen finally meets her match with Catherine and Katrina, a married couple who startle and intrigue her with their ever-increasing sexual and emotional intensity.
Perceptive and attentive, Catherine and Katrina prod at Helen’s life, revealing a childhood tragedy she’s been repressing. When her father begs her yet again for help getting parole, she realizes that she has a bargaining chip to get answers to her past.
A Good Happy Girl is interested in worlds without men—and women who will do what they can to get what they want. In her exploration of twisted desires, queer domesticity, and the effects of incarceration on the family, Marissa Higgins offers empathy to characters who often don’t receive it, with unsettling results.
About the Author
Marissa Higgins (she/her) is a lesbian writer and editor. Her essay on food, poverty, and grief, which originally appears in Catapult, is anthologized in the Best American Food Writing 2018. She’s a 2020 recipient of a D.C. artist grant for her nonfiction. She is working on a novel.
She is a staff writer at Daily Kos, where she covers progressive politics. Previously, she was an editor of Green Matters, an environmental news site, and prior to that, a writer for Bustle in the Lifestyle section and covered LGBTQ issues for the Daily Dot.
Her essays and reported features explore queer issues, women’s health, poverty, and popular science. Her work appears in The Atlantic, Salon, The Washington Post, Slate, NPR, Complex, Pacific Standard, Vice, Refinery29, Folks, and elsewhere.
Her poetry appears in Apogee, Bone Bouquet, Softblow, Camus, Noble/Gas Quarterly, and other journals.
Kathleen Dunn of WPR hosted Marissa as a guest speaker in her talk show, The Kathleen Dunn Show, where they discussed her experiences with poverty and food insecurity. Prior, Marissa also participated in a HuffPost Live segment on the housing discrimination faced by the LGBTQ community.
She’s been lucky enough to receive scholarships to participate in writing workshops at both Grubstreet and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She also received a grant for the Vermont Studio Center residency.
