LJ Pemberton is the author of Still Alive, which was longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award.
Publishers Weekly called Still Alive a “fresh and vivid debut.” This heady exploration of love and disillusionment in the contemporary age follows the misadventures of V as she contends with love, family dysfunction, and the “crummy job market of the aughts” in “aching prose.” Jason Christian, for Full Stop, said: “I keep thinking of Still Alive as a queer Fight Club (1996) for the millennial generation…If Fight Club touted moralistic dogma and material deprivation as a path to liberation, Still Alive laughs in the face of such naïve confidence in easy solutions.” In Exacting Clam, Charles Holdefer said Still Alive “is appealingly unpredictable, as the author resists easy answers or determinism.”
Pemberton’s essays, poetry, and award-winning stories have been featured in The Baffler, Exacting Clam, Los Angeles Review, Northwest Review, the Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. She currently reviews fiction for Publishers Weekly. She holds a BA from Reed College and an MFA from Columbia University.
