Lisa Locascio, "OPEN ME" w/ Karolina Waclawiak

Roxana Olsen has always dreamed of going to Paris, and after high school graduation finally plans to travel there on a study abroad program—a welcome reprieve from the bruising fallout of her parents’ divorce. But a logistical mix-up brings Roxana to Copenhagen instead, where she’s picked up at the airport by Søren, a twenty-eight-year-old guide who is meant to be her steward. Instantly drawn to one another, Roxana and Søren’s relationship turns romantic, and when he asks Roxana to accompany him to a small town in the north of Denmark for the rest of the summer, she doesn’t hesitate to accept. There, Roxana’s world narrows and opens as she experiences fantasy, ritual, and the pleasures of her body, a thrilling realm of erotic and domestic bliss. She is so enamored by her cohabitation and intense connection with Søren that at first, she almost doesn’t notice that he does not give her a key to the apartment, leaving her locked in each day while he works in the library on his African-American
literature thesis.

As their relationship deepens, Søren’s temperament darkens, revealing his depression, anxiety and prejudices. Roxana finds herself increasingly drawn to a local outsider, in many ways Søren’s polar opposite, whom she learns is a Bosnian Muslim refugee from the Balkan War. When she decides to sneak out to find him her experiences open in a way she could never have imagined.

An erotic coming-of-age like no other, Lisa Locascio's Open Me is a daringly original and darkly compelling portrait of a young woman discovering her power, her sex, and her voice; and an incisive examination of xenophobia, migration, and what it means to belong.

Locascio is joined in conversation by Karolina Waclawiak, a screenwriter and author of two critically acclaimed novels, How to Get into the Twin Palms and The Invaders.