Slut Lullabies: Stories, Gina Frangello

Description

Slut Lullabies: Stories
Paperback – January 15, 2026
by Gina Frangello
Foreword by Rebecca Makkai

Slut Lullabies is the short story collection that cemented Gina Frangello’s reputation as one of the most fearless writers exploring sexuality, power, gender, and the body. Intimate, volatile, and darkly funny, these stories move through beauty and horror with equal force, refusing easy judgments or moral comfort.

Across the collection, Frangello presents characters caught in the collision between desire and consequence. A gay Latino man planning a commitment ceremony finds himself navigating hypocrisy when his lover’s wealthy, WASP mother hires a glitzy wedding planner. A desperate teenage girl manipulates power and perception in an attempt to rescue her stepmother from a violent home. A wife turns to infidelity and drugs to cope with chronic pain after a life-altering accident. A young man seeks atonement in Amsterdam after betraying his girlfriend. A socialite confronts her past as her husband’s illness erodes both privilege and security.

These stories are unapologetically raw, interrogating who holds power, who is punished for wanting, and how survival often requires moral compromise. Frangello’s prose is sharp, compassionate, and unflinching, especially in its portrayals of deeply flawed, fascinating women navigating systems that demand both compliance and sacrifice.

This new paperback edition includes two previously unpublished stories and features a foreword by Rebecca Makkai, situating Frangello’s work as a vital precursor to contemporary fiction that centers complexity, contradiction, and female rage without apology.