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Julia Langbein

Biography

Julia Langbein

Julia Langbein, a sketch and standup comedian for many years, holds a doctorate in Art History and is the author of a nonfiction book about comic art criticism (LAUGH LINES, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2022). She wrote the viral comedy blog The Bruni Digest, which reviewed New York Times critic Frank Bruni’s restaurant reviews every week and has since written about food, art and travel for Gourmet, Eater, Salon, Frieze and other publications. A native of Chicago, she lives outside of Paris with her family.

Julia Langbein

Books by Julia Langbein

by Julia Langbein - Fiction, Humor

Broke English teacher Penelope Schleeman is as surprised as anyone when her feminist, eco-warrior novel American Mermaid becomes a bestseller. But when Hollywood insists she convert her fierce, androgynous protagonist into a teen sex object in a clamshell bra, strange things start to happen. Is Penelope losing her mind, or has her fictional mermaid come to life, enacting revenge against society’s limited view of what a woman can and should be? AMERICAN MERMAID follows a young woman braving the casual slights and cruel calculations of a winner-take-all society and discovering a beating heart in her own fiction: a new kind of mermaid who will fight to keep her voice and choose her place.