State Champ

by Hilary Plum

Overview

“A searing portrait of political & personal desperation,” (Andrea Lawlor), Plum's State Champ is a protest novel for our times.
A Jezebel Book Club Pick

A high-school state champion runner turned college dropout, Angela is working as a receptionist at an abortion clinic when a “heartbeat law” criminalizes most abortions statewide. In the ensuing upheaval, her boss is arrested for providing illegal procedures and the clinic is shut down.

Angela has never been either an activist or a model employee. But she gets why her boss didn't follow the rules. She decides to go on a hunger strike in the boarded-up clinic, to protest her boss's arrest and everything that's been lost. She'll draw on her skillset: the masochistic discipline of a runner, a history of self-destructive behavior, and a willingness to sleep on exam room tables (whose hygienic paper she uses as her diary).

Angela's protest is solitary, enraged, and a little messy, but it mobilizes a group of people around her-an ex who's a local journalist looking for a good story, the everyday people the clinic once served, and most especially a formidable anti-abortion activist named Janine.

Lucid, strange, and deeply metal, State Champ cuts through the political rhetoric to explore the relationship between bodily autonomy and real freedom. Angela's story is about what abortion access means day-to-day and how much we are-in ways that can transform us-responsible for one another.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639735433
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	05/13/2025
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Hilary Plum is the author of five books, including the poetry collection Excisions, the essay collection Hole Studies, and the Fence Modern Prize in Prose-winning novel Strawberry Fields. She teaches at Cleveland State University and in the NEOMFA program, and she serves as associate director of the CSU Poetry Center. Her work has appeared in Granta, Astra, The Rupture, Los Angeles Review of Books, Cleveland Review of Books, and elsewhere. She lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Editorial Reviews

“True to the lived experience of a protest . . . Plum's contributions to this canon are often funny, and pleasantly odd . . . As Angela points out, the judicial system may not be able to comprehend the ungovernable parts of our bodies and minds, to hear those ticking clocks inside us-but a novel can.” —New York Times Book Review

“Impossible to put down . . . State Champ is a post-Dobbs novel we're lucky to have.” —Emma Alpern, New York Magazine's The Cut

“This inventive and compelling story centers on Angela, a state running champ who has dropped out (of running, college, the BS of life more generally) and decides to protest the criminalization of abortion with a hunger strike. Strikingly composed and delivered, Plum's latest punches high above its weight.” —Ms. Magazine

“Revelatory and impassioned . . . Life dwindles from Angela's politicized body but not from her purpose in this sharp, incisive, and galvanizing portrait of a woman exerting her choice.” —Shelf Awareness

“Darkly funny, in a made-you-snort sort of way . . . a short, tight novel that goes by quickly [and offers] solidarity; a look inside the brain of a less-than-perfect woman putting her body on the line to seek justice in the face of injustice. Sure, she's technically fictional-but in times of darkness, the liberatory power of imagination is important.” —Jezebel, June Book Club Pick

“An acrobatic, harrowing marathon of cut-to-the-quick prose, with a narrator who's ferocious, funny, and wise. State Champ churns with tremendous urgency that would be, and will be, vital in any era. Hilary Plum is a breathtaking talent.” —Henry Hoke, author of OPEN THROAT

“Oh, this voice! Ferocious, hilarious, slippery, wise-I couldn't stop listening. Hilary Plum is one of my favorite writers working today because her curiosity about injustice and liberation is so relentless, so tender, and so alert to the fact that every single one of us is implicated in the struggle.” —Leni Zumas, author of RED CLOCKS

“Plum's explosive and hilarious new political novel forges a vision of our own moment in American history that will go far in explaining the insanity of now to the future. State Champ's solitary, howling voice slashes deep down into America's naked, troubled heart. A vivid, mind-blowing and soulful book.” —Robin McLean, author of PITY THE BEAST

“Where's the red line, sheeple? State Champ knows. A defiant punk voice, fucked up and bristling from defeats, growls her barbed protest song, so vivid and direct you can't tell when its ragged refusals transform into the limpid melodic rill of exit music and fight song. Hilary Plum has composed an athletic, poised, and complex fury, knowing of the body and leavened with foils, to remind us how to take a stand.” —Eugene Lim, author of SEARCH HISTORY

“Hilary Plum's State Champ is somehow simultaneously a searing portrait of political & personal desperation, a deep anti-hagiographical investigation into how to be a person in our contemporary fascist state, and a relentlessly funny bildungsroman for the rest of us. Every time I put this book down briefly, someone else picked it up and refused to give it back until they finished, because once you start, you can't stop. You're next.” —Andrea Lawlor, author of PAUL TAKES THE FORM OF A MORTAL GIRL

“State Champ comes at you with a furious and feral intelligence, ninja slacker wit, and a reckless hope that blasts through the dim fug of contemporary politics. Hilary Plum's latest novel is a hardcore, pitch-perfect, breakout banger with a heart as big as the world, from one of our finest unsung talents. Compulsively readable.” —Roy Scranton, author of LEARNING TO DIE IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

“Gloriously devastating . . . it grabbed me by the throat and never let go . . . timely and prescient . . . empathetic and enraging and also gloriously written . . . [a] perceptive portrait of our dystopian present.” —Kim Van Alkemade, author of ORPHAN #8 on WAMC The Roundtable's "Book Picks"

From the Publisher