Visiting Author - Ilana Masad - Beings: A Novel

Date and Time

• Wednesday, Nov 12, 2025  5:30pm - 6:30pm

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Arts

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From the celebrated author of All My Mother's Lovers, a new novel based on true events asks whether extraterrestrial life might be what ties us to one another, to history, and to reality itself. Please join us in welcoming author Ilana Masad on Wednesday, November 12th at 5:30 as she presents her new novel Beings!

About the Book:
“The alien abduction meets lesbian yearning novel that will restore your faith in the universe. Ilana Masad excavates the juiciness of historical archives and the otherworldly mysteries of the everyday in her most brilliant work yet.” –Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy

Named a "Most Anticipated Book" by the LA Times, Washington Post, Autostraddle, Town and Country, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Lit Hub, and The Millions

In 1961, an interracial couple drove through the dark mountains of New Hampshire when a mysterious light began to follow them. Years later, through hypnosis, they recalled an unbelievable brush with extraterrestrial life. Unintentionally, a genre was born: the alien abduction narrative.

In Ilana Masad's Beings, the couple's experience serves as one part of a trio of intertwined threads: Known only by their roles as husband and wife, Masad explores the pair's trauma and its aftermath and questions what it means to accept the impossible. In the second thread, letters penned by a budding science-fiction writer, Phyllis, to her beloved, Rosa, expose the raw ache of queer yearning, loneliness, and alienation in the repressive 1960s-as well as the joy of finding community. In the present day, a reclusive and chronically ill Archivist attempts to understand a strange forgotten childhood encounter while descending into obsession over both Phyllis's letters and the testimony of the first alien abductees.

Over the course of a decade, Phyllis wrestles with her desires and ambitions as a lesbian writer, while the abducted couple grapple with how to maintain control of their narrative. All the while, the archive shatters and reforms, redefining fact and fiction via the stories left behind by the abductees, Phyllis, and the Archivist themself. Masad makes human what is alien and makes tangible what is hidden – sometimes by chance and sometimes intentionally – in the archive.

About the Author:
Ilana Masad is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and criticism whose work has been widely published. Masad is the author of the novel All My Mother's Lovers and is co-editing the forthcoming anthology Here For All the Reasons: #BachelorNation’s Franchise Fascination.

Praise for the Book:
“Three gripping narratives entwine as supernatural encounters and personal revelations transform lives in the 1960s and the present… Miraculously, Masad makes this dense braid of stories easy to follow, elegantly blending serpentine sentences, endearing and intimately observed characters, natural dialogue, and playful, generous asides to keep the reader in enthralled suspense. A dazzlingly original testament to companionship, curiosity, and faith in ourselves in times of fear and loneliness.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“An incandescent exploration of memory, narrative, and sexual identity, Beings is certain to delight readers of literary fiction with sf elements.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Masad (All My Mother's Lovers) spins an affecting tale of aliens, alienation, and archives… The interconnected narratives reveal the power of stories and archival material to reach across time and help an isolated person find themselves. Readers will be swept away.” —Publishers Weekly