Gag Reflex

Dubbed a 2018 Debut Writer to Watch by Publisher’s Weekly

Nudes on Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021 and an SPD Best Seller

Through diaristic ellipses, Nash crafts an origin story of obsessional masochism.

Drawing on the nostalgia of a nascent digital age and grappling with an eating disorder, indie cult author Elle Nash paints a realistic and poignant portrait of a teenager’s quest for self-identification on both sides of the computer screen. Using Livejournal entries, we meet our protagonist, in her messy transition into adulthood in the midst of grappling with calorie counts, boys, and being honest with who she is only online. Following up her cult fiction debut Animals Eat Each Other, Nash shows she belongs in the same camp along with exciting feminist literary disrupters the likes of Melissa Broder and Alissa Nutting.

It’s 2005. Lucy shambles through the last weeks of her senior year of high school, jonesing for a thinner body, desperate to connect with another human. Who is reflected back at her when she is sleeping with someone, when she is puking into the toilet bowl? Who is reflected back when she’s alone? Only the internet knows, where she muses on the concept of her “self” through her Livejournal, with a cadre of online friends who are definitely NOT pro-anorexic. Everyone's sick here, but at least they understand.

Elle Nash is the author of Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books) UK edition (404 INK), and Nudes (SF/LD Books) UK Edition (404 Ink) and Deliver Me (forthcoming 2023, Unnamed Press). Her work appears in BOMB Magazine, Guernica, The Nervous Breakdown, Literary Hub, The Fanzine, Volume 1 Brooklyn, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine where she hosts her annual writing workshop, Textures. Elle lives in Glasgow, Scotland where she draws blood by day and slays with the pen by night. 

Find her on Twitter: @saderotica 
On Instagram: @saderotica