You are invited to a very special evening on Thursday, May 7th at 7pm. Author and artist Gabe Montesanti will be at Zenith Bookstore and share her new memoir Drag Thing: A Memoir of Mania and Mirrors. We’ll have refreshments and light snacks. Gabe will personally autograph her book afterwards. Invite a friend!

A defiant yet tender memoir about drag culture and bipolar disorder that reveals the hard-earned truths of being queer in the American Midwest.

In Drag Thing: A Memoir of Mania and Mirrors, Gabe Montesanti recounts her immersive entrance into St. Louis drag culture performing as Fender Bender, a drag king who ultimately transforms into a "drag thing" (a performer who defies classification altogether). Exploring the fluidity of gender and identity through parody and honest self-exposure, Montesanti learns about binding and the art of facial hair and contouring, and she designs and constructs her own elaborate costumes with minimal budget and maximal imagination. As she clambers for success on the stage with snowballing intensity and copes with estrangement from her family of origin, she fights for her sanity--for her life--in her battle with treatment-resistant bipolar disorder, until her drag persona and her rapid cycling mania become indistinguishable from each other.

Gabe Montesanti (she/they) is a queer writer and artist who resides in St. Louis, Missouri. She is the author of Brace for Impact: A Memoir (2022), which chronicles her time skating for Arch Rival Roller Derby and Drag Thing: A Memoir of Mania and Mirrors (2026). Gabe has been a competitive swimmer, a drag artist, and an educator. She was raised in the working-class Midwest.