Selected by Dave Eggers for "Best American Nonrequired Reading."

"Laurie Weeks' "Zipper Mouth" is a short tome of infinitesimal reach, a tiny star to light the land."--Eileen Myles, author of "Inferno"

"Zipper Mouth" is a brilliant rabbit hole of pitch-black hilarity, undead obsession, the horror of the everyday, and drugs drugs drugs."--Michelle Tea, co-founder of Sister Spit

In this extraordinary debut novel, Laurie Weeks captures the freedom and longing of life on the edge in New York City. Ranting letters to Judy Davis and Sylvia Plath, an unrequited fixation on a straight best friend, exalted nightclub epiphanies, devastating morning-after hangovers--"Zipper Mouth" chronicles the exuberance and mortification of a junkie, and transcends the chaos of everyday life.

Laurie Weeks has been a superstar in the New York downtown writing world since the 1980s. Her fiction and other writings have been published in "The Baffler," "Vice," "Nest," "Index Magazine," "LA Weekly," and Semiotext(e)'s "The New Fuck You." A portion of this novel appeared recently in Dave Eggers' "The Best American Nonrequired Reading." She has taught in writing programs at University of California San Diego and the New School, and has toured the United States with the girl-punk group Sister Spit.