unprecedented times

preorder here, forthcoming August 18, 2026

Which comes first: experience or narrative? Eighteen-year-old Rishi thinks she knows the answer as she arrives on campus for her first year at Stanford, with the vague goal of living a life worth writing about. With the dual recklessness of a budding writer and a homosexual, she dives head-first into first loves, complex female friendships, and literature classes, seeking to conquer the amorphous, amoral project of adulthood in a world that might collapse before she’s gotten a chance to change it. But no sooner has Rishi’s own world ignited than the rest of the world is shut down by the Covid-19 pandemic. Stanford closes its campus, prematurely ending a chapter of Rishi’s life — these are unprecedented times, authority figures keep announcing. Cast unexpectedly into the real world, Rishi moves into a farm commune with her college classmates, desperate to salvage the original plot of her story. Faced instead by a year of unbridled joy and unexpected violence, Rishi freestyles her way through a painful, tender coming-of-age journey.​