Loyalty is so thrilled to welcome Ruth Madievsky and Nicole Chung for a virtual event celebrating the release of All Night Pharmacy!! We're so excited for this conversation between two brilliant authors. This event is free to attend and will be held digitally via Crowdcast. Click here to register for the event. You can also order a copy of the book from our website to be automatically added to the registration list, and there will be an option to snag the book during the event.

Rachel Kushner meets David Lynch in this fever dream of an LA novel about a young woman who commits a drunken act of violence just before her sister vanishes without a trace

On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister Debbie to Salvation, a Los Angeles bar patronized by energy healers, aspiring actors, and all-around misfits. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions—nothing unusual for two sisters bound in an incredibly toxic relationship. Our unnamed narrator has always been under the spell of the alluring and rebellious Debbie and, despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears.

Falling deeper into the life she cultivated with her sister, our narrator gets a job as an emergency room secretary where she steals pills to sell on the side. Cue Sasha, a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union who arrives at the hospital claiming to be a psychic tasked with acting as the narrator’s spiritual guide. The nature of this relationship evolves and blurs, a kaleidoscope of friendship, sex, mysticism, and ambiguous power dynamics.

With prose pulsing like a neon sign, Ruth Madievsky’s All-Night Pharmacy is an intoxicating portrait of a young woman consumed with unease over how a person should be. As she attempts sobriety and sexual embodiment, she must decide whether to search for her estranged sister, or allow her to remain a relic of the past.

Ruth Madievsky is the author of a bestselling poetry collection, Emergency Brake (Tavern Books, 2016). Her work appears in Harper’s Bazaar, Guernica, Literary Hub, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of the Cheburashka Collective, a community of women and nonbinary writers from the former Soviet Union. Originally from Moldova, she lives in Los Angeles, where she works as an HIV and primary care pharmacist.

Nicole Chung is the author of the new memoir A Living Remedy (April 4, 2023) and the national bestseller All You Can Ever Know (2018). Named a Best Book of the Year by over twenty outlets, including NPR, The Washington Post, and Time, All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and NAIBA Book of the Year, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, and an Indies Choice Honor Book. Nicole is currently a contributing writer at The Atlantic, a Time contributor, and a Slate columnist. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, GQ, and Vulture. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she now lives in the Washington, DC area.

Please note Loyalty has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during this virtual event.

Ruth Madievsky and Nicole Chung for ALL NIGHT PHARMACY