Porter Square Books: Boston Edition and GrubStreet are delighted to present the latest installment of the Grubbie Debut event series, featuring debut author Kasey LeBlanc! Join us for a celebration of his novel Flyboy on Tuesday, May 21 at Porter Square Books: Boston Edition (50 Liberty Dr. Boston, Ma 02210). Author Jennie Wood will join LeBlanc in conversation, and the author talk will be followed by a signing line.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda meets The Night Circus in this standout debut YA novel, about a boy who visits a magic-filled circus in his dreams in order to escape reality, where his trans identity remains a secret. An ideal next read for fans of Cemetery Boys.

After an incident at his school leaves closeted trans teenager Asher Sullivan needing stitches, his mother betrays him in the worst possible way—she sends him to Catholic school for his senior year. Now he has to contend with hideous plaid skirts, cranky nuns, and #bathroomJesus.

Nighttime brings an escape for Asher when he dreams of the Midnight Circus—the one place where he is seen for the boy he truly is. Too bad it exists only in his sleep. At least, that’s what he believes until the day his annoyingly attractive trapeze rival, Apollo, walks out of his dreams and into his classroom. On the heels of this realization that the magical circus might be real, Asher also learns that his time there is limited.

In his desperation to hang on to the one place he feels at home, Asher sets both worlds on a collision course that could destroy all the relationships he cares about most. Now he must decide how far he’ll go to preserve the magical circus, even if it means facing his biggest challenge yet—coming out.

“As a closeted trans Catholic school kid, I would have given both my kidneys and my left lung to get my hands on a book like Flyboy. We have truly come so far that now the kids who need it get to keep their kidneys, but they’ll lose their minds swooning, crying, and cheering for such a beautiful story of trans magic.”
— Sonora Reyes, National Book Award Finalist for The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School

Kasey LeBlanc was an Alice Hoffman fellow with GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program and a finalist for the Boston Public Library Writer-in-Residence program. He has since been published by WBUR’s Cognoscenti, Writer Unboxed, and Them. When not writing, he can be found learning to unicycle and mourning the loss of Boston’s only flying trapeze school. You can visit him online at kaseyleblanc.com.

Jennie Wood is a non-binary author, comic creator and musician. They created the critically acclaimed, award-winning Flutter graphic novel series. Flutter was named one of The Advocate’s best LGBTQ graphic novels of the year, a Barnes & Noble Book of the Month, an INDIEFAB Book of the Year finalist, a Virginia Library Association Diversity Honor Book and Best Graphic Novel of the Year by the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Jennie is also the author of the award-winning YA novel, A Boy Like Me. Their latest graphic novel, Paper Planes, won a 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Young Adult Fiction and a 2023 IPPY Bronze Medal in Young Adult Fiction. Their work can be seen in several anthologies, including The New York Times best-selling FUBAR, the Eisner award-winning anthology Love is Love, and John Carpenter’s Tales for a HalloweeNight. For more: jenniewood.com

Grubbie Debut: Kasey LeBlanc, author of Flyboy, in conversation with Jennie Wood