Work Nights

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize

A young queer woman finds herself in a love triangle with an unobtainable intern and a quick-tempered musician in this charming debut that combines Big Swiss with The Devil Wears Prada.

Jane Grabowski hauls herself to her nine to five office job at New York City’s most acclaimed newspaper to sit in stale air under severe florescent lights and mask her rage by sending emails with too many exclamation points.

Luckily, Jane has a reason to keep coming into the office: Madeline, the distractingly beautiful intern. Madeline has never dated a woman and is uncomfortable with labels but with carefully timed lunch breaks and painstakingly crafted texts, Jane works her way into her life. Meanwhile, Jane’s free-spirited artist roommate tries to keep her from falling for a straight girl by dragging Jane to gay bars and queer Shabbat dinners, where she meets the decidedly uncool and morally righteous musician, Addy.

Caught between Addy’s readiness to commit and Madeline’s alluring unpredictability, Jane is pulled down a slippery path of lies and deceit, leading to a plane ticket that threatens to take everything down in one fell swoop.

Author Biography

Erica Peplin is a writer from Detroit, Michigan, now based in Brooklyn. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Joyland, The Millions, McSweeney’s, The Village Voice, and more. From 2015 to 2016, she worked in the advertising department of The New York Times. Since then, she’s worked as a shipping clerk, a high school custodian, and a restaurant server. Find out more at EricaPeplin.com.