The Sleeping Sisters are Awaking… Preorder here.
Signed copies available for preorder from Bookworks, Albuquerque!
Advance Praise for The Sleeping Sisters
“The sun-drenched brutality of Jennifer Givhan’s The Sleeping Sisters burns right through its readers’ retinas, blinding in its savage humanity and voracious heartache. This haunting elegy to twice told tales—and our mothers who tell them—is absolutely volcanic, ready to erupt on your bookshelf if you don’t read it straight away.” —Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
“A chilling exploration of motherhood, murder, grief, and deep secrets, this book further solidifies Jennifer Givhan’s place amongst contemporary literary greats. Simply put: The Sleeping Sisters is a masterpiece of Southwestern Gothic fiction.” —Pedro Iniguez, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Fever Dreams of a Parasite
“Jennifer Givhan brings a poet’s ear for language to a propulsive mystery-thriller, and the combination is remarkable. In The Sleeping Sisters, she fuses lyrical horror with genuine narrative drive, delivering unexpected twists while maintaining control of her prose. Drawing on the unresolved West Mesa murders and the myth of the headless woman, the novel is grounded in Albuquerque with intelligence, specificity, and deep respect for place. A brilliant book by a writer who understands both language and plot.”—Alisa Valdes, author of Hollow Beasts
“House of Spirits meets The Wire in this marvelously strange story of murder and motherhood; a gloriously surreal novel in which magical realism meets police procedural. Jenn Givhan twists your brain and leaves you looking at the world differently for a long time afterward. I have no idea how to describe what I just read, but it was really, really cool.” —T. Kingfisher, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of What Moves the Dead
“Jennifer Givhan’s The Sleeping Sisters is as brutal as it is beautiful. When teenage girls are found decapitated in Albuquerque, one mother begins to fear the violence haunting her community may be rooted in her own bloodline. What unfolds is part crime novel, part fever dream, part reckoning with inherited trauma and religious hypocrisy. Givhan writes with a raw, lyrical intensity most writers spend a lifetime trying to unlock, turning myth and memory into something sharp, unsettling, and, at times, devastating. This is a bold, haunting novel about generational violence and the women who refuse to stay buried.” —Carter Wilson, USA Today bestselling author of Tell Me What You Did
“The Sleeping Sisters is cataclysmic. Givhan’s thunderous voice will break you open and etch itself into your bones. This book is an enthralling and ferocious page-turner with lyrical prose that interweaves gripping tension with the visceral ache of motherhood.” —Rios de la Luz, author of Itzá
“A folkloric masterpiece. Givhan winds a story as supple and horrifying as a bloody silk ribbon, and the result is electrifying. Part ode to the monstrosity of matrescence and part invective against injustice, The Sleeping Sisters is a story from which I could not look away. I loved every page.” — Taylor Grothe, author of Lethal Kiss
My first novel Trinity Sight won the Southwest Book Award, and I am an NEA and PEN Emerging Voices fellowship recipient. A poet and novelist, I create Latina and Indigenous thrillers that overturn concepts of the borderlands and re-envision what’s possible in these liminal spaces. My protagonists are strong women who are transformed and, via magical realism, change the world around them.
About my work, The San Diego Union-Tribune writes: “We get to see what happens when a literary sorceress throws poetry, magic, motherhood and misogyny into a cauldron, turns up the genre heat and lets it all boil.”
“A triumph. One of the most masterful marriages of horror, mystery, thriller and literary writing that I’ve read in some time. And it is certainly a book that will haunt you (in a good way!) for a very long time after you’ve turned the final page.” —Los Angeles Times
Read more about my books here.
From the blog
About Me
I’m Jenn Givhan, Chicana & Indigenous poeta novelista curandera healing generational trauma in the desert. The author of twelve books, I empower girls, women, and femmes to release shame and reach our dreams through our creativity. In my own life, I do this through poetry, fiction, essays, coaching and mentoring, and teaching classes! I raise my two beautiful children beside the Sleeping Sister volcanoes in New Mexico. Read more
Let’s hang out
For media inquiries and foreign rights, please contact my literary agent Rebecca Friedman: rebecca[at]rfliterary.com
For publicity requests, please contact Alyssa Persons at Little, Brown:
alyssa.persons[at]hbgusa.com
For film/TV rights, please contact Katrina Escudero at MGMT Artists: katrina[at]mgmt-entertainment.com