This event takes place on Crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required. 

Charis welcomes Lauren J. Joseph in conversation with Eliot Duncan for a celebration of Lean Cat, Savage Cat, a book about obsession and excess, doppelgängers and disassociation, fame and fandom, and the tyrannical return of unprocessed grief.

Alone at a party, sipping her celery sour, Charli knows she’s in a rut. Kicking around with the rest of London’s bohemian dropouts, she has no idea what to do with her arts degree and her research project on Romy Haag—the transsexual disco singer and long-time lover of David Bowie—has all but stalled out. But her life takes a turn when she bumps into the mysterious Alexander Geist. Androgynously, glamorously handsome, he feels something like a soul mate, another love once lost and now found. Naturally, when he leaves for Berlin, Charli follows.

There, at the center of the city’s febrile party scene, Charli and Alexander embark on their great project: turn Alexander into the greatest pop star since David Bowie. But Alexander is elusive, mercurial; Charli is in over her head before she realizes just how self-destructive her life has become under his spell.

Lean Cat, Savage Cat is Isherwood one-hundred years on, it's Nancy Mitford in the dark room, Bret Easton-Ellis amongst a raft of European low-lives scrabbling for success. It is the story of setting out in search of one thing and finding yourself in possession of something quite different, a book about obsession and excess, doppelgängers and disassociation, fame and fandom, the tyrannical return of unprocessed grief, and the terrible things we do to feel loved.

Lauren J. Joseph is a novelist and playwright.

Her first novel At Certain Points We Touch (Bloomsbury) was an Observer debut of 2022 and was chosen as a book of the year by Foyles, Stylist, Sheerluxe and Esquire. The follow up Lean Cat, Savage Cat was published February 2026 by Bloomsbury (UK) and Catapult (USA). Playboy calls it “chock full of good old-fashioned glamor, seduction, and style” while The Irish Independent says it’s “Darkly funny and hugely entertaining . . . a stylish novel that blends humour, chaos, and emotional depth.”

Lauren’s plays have been presented in the UK, USA and Germany and were published as a volume by Oberon in 2019. Her 2014 novella Everything Must Go (ITNA) was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and the Polari Prize.

Lauren has been contributing to underground publications and ‘zines for the past twenty years, with work featured in Polyester, PS I Love You, House Party, Bird Song and Fat Zine amongst others. Recent non-fiction writing appears in The Observer, Tate ETC, The Erotic Review, Vittles, Autostraddle, Frieze and Granta. Additionally she regularly reviews books for The Guardian. She also writes the substack Them Fatale

Eliot is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where he was a Truman Capote Fellow. His debut novel, PONYBOY (Norton, ’23), was the first book with a trans protagonist to be nominated for The National Book Award. He teaches a workshop called Exquisite Love: Madness as Divinity through Literature. He lives in New York City.

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The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on Crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate.

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Lean Cat, Savage Cat: Lauren J. Joseph in conversation with Eliot Duncan