When Colm Tóibín says you have to unbox your new novel RIGHT NOW, you do it. Even with an oyster schucker instead of a real knife.
NEW SKIN by @daikonoclast arrives May 12th! A scalding, darkly humorous debut following an enmeshed mother-daughter duo, both best friends and enemies, and the plastic surgery addiction that warps their lives into a perilous spiral.
NEW SKIN is going on tour! Catch me at these launches in NYC, LA, Austin, & Cape May; at reading series and panels; and the Edinburgh Book Festival w/ Colm Toibin.
*Lux Panel is now on May 20!
Can’t wait to see you 💜💙
(++More events soon)
@littlebrown@sterlinglordlit
Love this interview with @jared.denzel for @bombmag , where we talk about my novel NEW SKIN, out everywhere now!
We talk about the body as a site of history and expression, the performance of vulnerability, and the layered histories embedded in Los Angeles.
“Wang’s New Skin introduces a sharp, and often humorous, voice attuned to contradiction, where intimacy is as perilous as it is sustaining.”
GIVEAWAY! To celebrate the launch of NEW SKIN by Sarah Wang, we are partnering with Franchine Young to give away a copy of the book and a Franchine Young Skincare Wonder Balm. Dive into a story exploring extreme beauty culture, and pair it with a product that celebrates your skin at every age!
To enter for a chance to win:
🧴Follow @daikonoclast@franchineyoungireland and @littlebrown
📖Like this post
🫧Tag a friend in the comments below!
Sweepstakes ends 5/21/26. 1 prize available. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. US only, 18+. Official rules apply; link in bio.
MY READING LIFE: @daikonoclast , author of NEW SKIN, answered our Q&A so readers can discover the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing!
Following a mother and daughter trapped in a toxic cycle of love, resentment, and reinvention, New Skin is a scalding, darkly humorous debut novel about plastic surgery addiction and the false promises of the American Dream. When Linli Feng returns home to care for her estranged mother after another botched procedure, she is pulled into the dangerous world of black-market beauty treatments and exploitative reality television, forcing both women to confront the damage that obsession and survival have inflicted on their lives.
It is available from @littlebrown now!
NEW SKIN by Sarah Wang arrives today! This debut is scalding and darkly humorous as it follows an enmeshed mother-daughter duo, both best friends and enemies, and the plastic surgery addiction that warps their lives into a perilous spiral.
Here are a few quotes, in full, to get you excited:
💉“Sarah Wang’s New Skin is a marvel. Mirthfully and mercilessly abject, New Skin is a page-turner that feels equal parts cinematic romp and serrated analysis of some of the most important issues of our day: immigration, assimilation, debt, intergenerational suffering, self-immolation, and the possibilities for repair. A truly original debut from a seriously intelligent writer.” Maggie Nelson, author of LIKE LOVE and THE ARGONOTS
🧖♀️“If this terrifying era is going to produce a new canon of American immigration novels—and it should!—Sarah Wang’s New Skin will be one of its indisputable masterpieces, a novel of unique brilliance, so beautiful, hilarious, heartbreaking, teeming with a gloriously searing rage but also tenderness.” Francisco Goldman, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist MONKEY BOY
🧑🍼“New Skin offers a brilliantly dark account of a mother and her daughter locked in a relationship with each other and the wider world that no amount of surgery can cure. Sarah Wang’s novel is intense, engaging, original and hilarious.” Colm Tóibín, New York Times bestselling author of Long Island
✨“New Skin holds almost all of womanhood: impossible beauty standards, the inverted mother–daughter bond, and an adulthood rooted in the endless negotiation between obligation and shared trauma. This dynamite book is unsparing and darkly funny. It asks why does leaving often mean staying, and why does self-preservation so often become self-destruction?” Weike Wang, author of RENTAL HOUSE
📚 June’s First Novel Friday is a can’t-miss event: Not only is it our last FNF until the fall, but we’ve got an incredible lineup of debut novelists!
Join us next month in welcoming @cassandraneyenesch , author of A Little Bit Bad (@summitbooks ) 🌴; Morgan Thomas, author of Mad Eden (@fsgbooks ) 🐊; and Sarah Wang (@daikonoclast ), author of New Skin (@littlebrown ) 💉.
🎤 Vanessa Chan, author of The Storm We Made (@scribnerbooks ), will moderate.
🍸 Join us for happy hour in our Members Lounge and Terrace, complete with a signature cocktail and a playlist curated by the featured authors. Then, listen to readings and a Q&A with the authors, and continue the night with book signings and even more time to mingle with fellow book lovers.
Tickets are on sale now—secure yours at the link in our bio! 🔗
💉NEW SKIN 👄
NYC launch at McNally Jackson on Monday, May 11!
Sarah Wang in conversation with Larissa Pham.
RSVP required 🎫👇🏽
/event/sarah-wang-larissa-pham
Sarah Wang is the author of New Skin (Little, Brown, 2026). She has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and the London Review of Books, and teaches creative writing at Barnard College.
Larissa Pham is the author of Discipline, a novel; Pop Song, an essay collection and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize; and Fantasian, a novella. She is an assistant professor of writing at the New School.
@littlebrown@lrsphm@sterlinglordlit@mcnallyjackson
