The Beautifully Worthless

by Ali Liebegott

Published 1 February 2005
Winner of the 2005 Lambda Literary Award for Debut Lesbian Fiction. "The Beautifully Worthless is an outrageous act of kindness."--Eileen Myles "She's insanely talented, it's mad. The Beautifully Worthless crisscrosses the USA, like Close to the Knives, like Kerouac, desperately seeking out everything occluded and driven, a frenzy of seeking frozen into poetry."--Kevin Killian "Ali Liebegott's books evoke a life-affirming sensation that comes from embracing the pendular. Her ability to hit the right tone is scientific, almost violent in its precision--a single word or observation, well-placed, can have a reader crying or laughing aloud."--Evan Karp, Bomb Magazine A runaway waitress leaves her lover, grabs her dog, and hits the highway. Ali Liebegott maps her travels in a series of hilarious and heartbreaking letters to the girl she left behind, and some of the most exquisite poetry written about love, heartache, and madness.

Cha-Ching!

by Ali Liebegott

Published 15 March 2013
Theo, our scruffy, big-hearted, and quick-witted heroine, is not so much down on her luck as delivered luckless into a culture where the winners and losers have already been decided. Her adventures in getting over take her from San Francisco to New York City, from dyke bars to telemarketing outfits, casinos to free clinics. With the signature poet's voice that has won her awards and acclaim, Ali Liebegott investigates the conjoined hearts of hope and addiction in an unforgettable story of what it means to be young and broke in America. Praise for Cha-Ching!: "...frank, funny and painfully realistic ...Liebegott has unleashed a book that's part road novel, part portrait of a would-be artist as a young woman and part unabashed romance."--Josh Davis, The Rumpus "Ali Liebegott's books evoke a life-affirming sensation that comes from embracing the pendular. Her ability to hit the right tone is scientific, almost violent in its precision--a single word or observation, well-placed, can have a reader crying or laughing aloud."--Evan Karp, Bomb Magazine "Cha-Ching!,
[Liebegott's] latest novel, is one of those books that cause you to look up, blinking, realizing that you've read 75 pages and your coffee is cold. It's a rush of offtrack betting, impulsive road trips, liquor-fueled make-out sessions, and the sort of low-end jobs that are invisible in most fiction but everywhere in Liebegott's work."--San Francisco Magazine "Cha-Ching! is a rush - the clatter of youth on the angry move, the rattling of dreamy gambles in crappy apartments, the desperate crash of falling for someone despite the million reasons why and the bang! bang! bang! of our tender hearts."--Daniel Handler author of Why We Broke Up "Cha-Ching! is so raw with need that I found myself itching that addict's itch to chase the seemingly impossible."--Karolina Waclawiak, deputy editor of The Believer and author of How to Get Into the Twin Palms "An open-hearted, deeply romantic story about a fucked-up dyke, her pit bull, her search for love, her tenuous grasp on hope, a pretty girl and the literal spin of the wheel."--Sarah Schulman, author of The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination "...fresh and compelling ...the novel offers a subtle and compassionate depiction of addiction and its cycle of despair-and-hope, too.
"--Charlotte Bhskar, Zyzzyva About the Author: Ali Liebegott is the author of the award-winning books The Beautifully Worthless and The IHOP Papers. In 2010 she took a train trip across America interviewing female poets for a project titled, The Heart Has Many Doors; excerpts from these interviews are posted monthly on The Believer Logger. Her novel Cha-Ching! is the third in the City Lights/Sister Spit series. In addition, she is the founding editor at Writers Among Artists whose first publication, Faggot Dinosaur, was released in 2012.