Happy Bad

Description

“Nolan is a skillful satirist, and one whose aim is extensive, wickedly funny and true.”–New Orleans Times-Picayune

“A self-assured debut that is also a warning.”–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Delaney Nolan has written a brutal, joyful, surprising, and gorgeous novel of human contradictions. It’s a stunner.”–Julia Phillips, author of Bear and Disappearing Earth

Hernan Diaz meets Ottessa Moshfegh in this madcap road trip chronicle; a moving display of human connection in the face of violence and climate destruction from a remarkable new voice in fiction.

Beatrice works at Twin Bridge, a chronically underfunded residential treatment center in near-future East Texas, teeming with enraged teenage girls on either too many or not enough drugs. On a normal day, it’s difficult for Beatrice and the other staff–Arda, Carmen, and Linda–to keep their cool in dust-blown Askewn. But when a heat wave triggers a massive, sustained blackout, Beatrice and the other staff and residents must evacuate. Facing police brutality, sweltering heat, panicked evacuees, the girls’ mounting withdrawal, and the consequences of her own lies, they search for a route out of the blackout zone. A catastrophe novel by turns tender and hilarious, fueled by a low-simmering political rage, Happy Bad is a rocket arrived on Earth.
Binding Type: Hardcover
Author: Delaney Nolan
Published: 10/14/2025
Publisher: Astra House
ISBN: 9781662603280
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 1.20″ H x 8.30″ L x 5.80″ W

About the Author
Delaney Nolan received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Rona Jaffe fellow. She has since received a Pushcart Prize, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, and a Fulbright Fellowship in fiction; her fiction has appeared in Electric Literature, Guernica, Indiana Review, Oxford American, Tin House, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere, and has been adapted into a radio play and a short film. Her work has been chosen as a notable for Best American Essays and translated into Arabic, Bulgarian, Italian, and Polish. Based in New Orleans, she has also received recognition for her reporting in The Guardian, The Intercept, BBC, Al Jazeera, Mother Jones, and elsewhere.