Flat Earth by Levy, Anika Jade

A young woman struggles with the artistic success of her more privileged, beautiful best friend in this ruthless portrait of the New York art scene in which relationships are transactional, men are vampiric, and women have limited time to trade on their youth, beauty, and talent--it's Renata Adler's Speedboat for the Adderall generation

"I read this book in a night, breathless and enraptured; wanting to save everyone in it, and wanting to watch them burn forever." --Leslie Jamison

Avery is a grad student in New York working on a collection of cultural reports and flailing financially and emotionally. She dates older men for money, and others for the oblivion their egos offer. In an act of desperation, Avery takes a job at a right-wing dating app. The "white-paper" she is tasked to write for the startup eventually merges with her dissertation, resulting in a metafictional text that reveals itself over the course of the novel.

Meanwhile, her best friend, Frances, an effortlessly chic emerging filmmaker from a wealthy Southern family, drops out of grad school, gets married, and somehow still manages to finish her first feature documentary. Frances's triumphant return to New York as the toast of the art world sends Avery into a final tailspin, pushing her to make a series of devastating decisions.

In this generational portrait, attention spans are at an all-time low and dopamine tolerance is at an all-time high. Flat Earth is a story of coming of age in America, a novel about commodification, conspiracy theories, mimetic desire, and the difficulties of female friendship that's as sharp and sardonic as it is heartbreaking.

Author: Anika Jade Levy
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 11/04/2025
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.75lbs
ISBN: 9781646222810

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2025
Publishers Weekly 09/29/2025
Booklist 10/01/2025

About the Author
ANIKA JADE LEVY is a writer from Colorado. She is a founding editor of Forever Magazine and teaches in the Writing program at Pratt Institute. Her fiction and criticism has appeared in Interview Magazine, Nylon, Flaunt, Grand, and elsewhere. Flat Earth is her first book.