Mechanics’ Hall & Back Cove Books present the launch of Emily Nemens’ new book CLUTCH, and a conversation with the author and Nick Fuller Googins.

Emily Nemens spent over a decade editing literary quarterlies, including leading The Paris Review and serving as co-editor and prose editor of The Southern Review. Nick Fuller Googins is the author of the novels, The Frequency of Living Things and The Great Transition. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Men’s Health, The Sun, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.

Clutch follows a group of five women, friends for twenty years, as they navigate the biggest challenges of their lives, asking: When you’re hanging on by your fingernails, how can you extend a hand to the ones you love?

As undergrads, Reba, Hillary, Carson, Gregg, and Bella formed the kind of rare bond that college brochures promise—friendship that lasts a lifetime. Two decades later, the women are spread across the country but remain firmly tethered through their ever-unfurling group chat. They’ve made it through COVID and childbirth and midcareer challenges, but no one can anticipate what’s coming down the pike.