This event has passed
Emily Doyle - Please Don't Touch the Body
Past event
Featured Book
Please Don't Touch The Body
“A magnificent debut” (Laila Lalami) that explores loneliness and community, religion and repression, and the pleasure and pain of womanhood.
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Debutiful, Lit Hub, Chicago Review of Books, and Autostraddle
By turns tender and irreverent, the 11 genre-bending stories in Please Don't Touch the Body are thrillingly concerned with the devastation-and power-of being alive today.
In the collection's first story, a Japanese woman finds healing in a secret life as a sex advice columnist after being fetishized by her white husband for decades. In the fourth story, Ronald Reagan is reincarnated as a puppy and must cope with being squeezed, dropped, and controlled by his young, queer owner. And in “Thank You No Thank You,” a young woman grapples with the rules she learned in her religious childhood, the freedoms of her new and more liberal life, and her actual desires as she vacations with her long-term boyfriend.
Together these inventive, emotionally rich stories reveal an incredible new vision and “a writer to watch” (Rita Chang-Eppig).
About This Event
We’re excited to welcome Emily Doyle to Celia Bookshop to celebrate the debut of her short story collection Please Don’t Touch the Body.
Emily’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Sun, and elsewhere, and received numerous awards. She is the author of the forthcoming novel Encounter and teaches at UC Riverside.
Emily will discuss her work and the path to her debut with Kat Lewis, a writer of fiction and video games. The conversation will be followed by audience questions and a book signing.
Book + Ticket = $29. Event Ticket Only = $5. Wine and cheese will be served. Visit our website www.celiabookshop.com to purchase tickets.
Featured Author
Emily Doyle
Emily Doyle is the author of the debut collection Please Don’t Touch the Body and her forthcoming debut novel, Encounter. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review, the Sun, and elsewhere, and she has received numerous awards, including the Abraham Lincoln Polonsky Endowed Award and the Bread Loaf–Rona Jaffe Foundation Participant Scholarship. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at UC Riverside.
About the Venue
Celia Bookshop
We are a woman-owned independent bookstore in the heart of Swarthmore offering a curated selection of new books including bestsellers, classics, and a large children's section. Community-centered, Celia is more than a bookstore—it’s a place to connect, explore, and find something you didn’t know you were looking for.
Visit store pageMore at Celia Bookshop
Author Talk & Q+A with Dr. Karabi Acharya
Join us to celebrate Multitudes with author and public health expert Dr. Karabi Acharya , in conversation with author Kat Yeh . Together, they’ll discuss Multitudes and its exploration of identity, being multiracial, belonging, connection, and the experiences that shape who we are. The conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A, book signing, and wine and cheese reception.
November Prose for the Planet
What would it take to build a future of greater possibility? In Abundance , New York Times journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson explore how politics, policy, and bureaucracy can stand in the way of progress—and how we might rethink our approach to housing, clean energy, infrastructure, and more. Join Phil Coleman, founder of AFewSteps, an environmental nonprofit, for a conversation about the book’s ideas, the challenges they raise, and what it might look like to embrace a more ambitious vision for the future.
Author Talk + Q&A with Chinelo Okparanta
Join us to celebrate This Impossible Life , the new novel from acclaimed author Chinelo Okparanta, director of the creative writing program at Swarthmore College, in conversation with bestselling novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn. They’ll discuss Okparanta’s new book and its exploration of love, identity, family, belonging, and the choices that shape the lives we build for ourselves. The conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A, book signing, and wine and cheese reception.