American Thighs

Pushcart Prize Award-winning author Elizabeth Ellen's American Thighs tells the darkly comedic story of a thirty-one-year-old former child star's journey from Hollywood to Elkheart, Indiana, experiencing for the first time the off-screen life of a high school sophomore.

Tatum Grant spent the first years of her life on various film sets and locations in Hollywood, never knowing a real childhood, before becoming impregnated by an older, award-winning actor. Fifteen years after his death, experiencing an existential crisis, Tatum leaves Hollywood, her mother and her daughter behind, on a quest to find herself. Posing as a 16-year-old student with the help of her daughter's stolen identification, Tatum uses the talents she learned portraying various film characters to earn a spot on the cheer team, date a football player, and befriend the most popular girl at school.

Like Tom Perrota's Election, the novel is told through the voices of students and teachers at Dobson High, as well as social media influencers, actors, and celebrity children back in Hollywood, readers follow as Tatum's past catches up with her amidst a cross-country road trip turned police chase.

Elizabeth Ellen manifests typical teenage woes into a breathtaking, rib-breaking story of love, loss, and media. American Thighs strikes the same chord as Heathers but for the TikTok generation.

"Ellen walks on at least five different tightropes, handling the difficult themes of teenage angst, family conflicts, and trauma with deft skill. Brilliant." —Booklist

“Furious, hilarious, frantic, messy, American Thighs is the Moby-Dick for our present crazed moment, questing after everything precious and innocent we’ve destroyed. Open it up and get out of its way.” —Daniel Handler (AKA Lemony Snicket), author of A Series of Unfortunate Events

"Elizabeth Ellen’s American Thighs is an elegy for American girlhood, for the way in which we are squeezed in the vise of pop culture and the male gaze, and for the way we increasingly have little choice but to wild the fuck OUT. Elizabeth Ellen is one of the most fearless, gripping writers out there, writing the way Bret Easton Ellis would if he had actual balls. I started panting on page 1 of this book, and I still haven’t caught my breath." —Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive

Elizabeth Ellen's writing has appeared in Harper's Magazine, FENCE, Post Road, American Short Fiction, McSweeney's, among other publications. She is the author of several books including the novel Person/a and the story collection Her Lesser Work. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for fiction and is the founder and editor of Short Flight/Long Drive books. She lives in Michigan.

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