Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarefied bubble.

a deeply relatable and profoundly enjoyable read, one drenched in prismatic color and light.'-Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of With Teeth FINALIST FOR THE MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD - ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Glamour, PopSugar, Debutiful It's 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating.

Reality: When the Muse Finally Speaks.” Ballantine Books published SIRENS & MUSES on July 12, 2022.Four artists are drawn into a web of rivalry and desire at an elite art school and on the streets of New York in this 'gripping, provocative, and supremely entertaining' ( BuzzFeed) debut 'Captures the ache-inducing quality of art and desire. I picture the book as a problem I kept creating as I was trying to solve it, almost like an Escher drawing: a problem that falls into itself again and again and which you can’t climb out of because you’re creating it as you go.” The book was featured on must-read lists from The Millions, Reads Rainbow, and Lambda Literary, and Lit Hub featured a personal essay by Angress titled “Fantasy vs. The Minneapolis Star Tribune published a wonderful review of the novel, in which Ellen Akins praises: “Angress is very good at getting what people think about and what they want when they make art, whether from political conviction, a performative impulse or a deep need to convey what they see…The moments of recognition and frustration, revelation and betrayal, desire and revulsion are convincing and moving, and Angress' portrayal of the intersection - or disconnect - of art, politics, idealism and practicality within the web of familial, romantic,and professional relationships is painterly, in the best sense of the word.” Angress was interviewed by Eva Dunsky for the Chicago Review of Books, where she shared her writing process for SIRENS & MUSES: “I worked on including either imagistic or thematic echoes so that the different storylines were speaking to each other even if they weren’t intersecting…There’s sort of a meta aspect to this book-a lot of the ideas and anxieties it explores were ideas and anxieties I had as I was writing it. Antonia Angress’s debut novel SIRENS & MUSES published to warm reception this week.

Sirens & muses by antonia angress