MONSTER OF A LAND NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE ORDER
Release Date | June 16, 2026
From The New York Times bestselling author of a Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing comes an update of John Steinback’s trip in Travels with Charley, a cross-country journey exploring modern America with Lauren Hough’s signature observational wit, searing social commentary, and perspective as someone who knows what it’s like to truly exist on the margins in this country.
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About Lauren
"LAUREN HOUGH was born in Germany and raised in seven countries, and West Texas. She’s been an Air Force airman, a bartender, a bouncer, a construction laborer, a driver, a green-aproned barista, and a cable guy. She’s the author of the New York Times bestselling essay collection, Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, Texas Highways, Huffpost, and The Guardian. She’s a writer at large for Texas Highways. She lives in Austin with a dog named Woody Guthrie."
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LEAVING ISN’T THE HARDEST THING
Searing and extremely personal essays from the heart of working-class America, shot through with the darkest elements the country can manifest–cults, homelessness, and hunger–while discovering light and humor in unexpected corners. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.
As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the U.S. Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe–to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile–but it wasn’t until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond “The Family.”
Along the way, she’s loaded up her car and started over, trading one life for the next. She’s taken pilgrimages to the sights of her youth, been kept in solitary confinement, dated a lot of women, dabbled in drugs, and eventually found herself as what she always wanted to be: a writer. Here, as she sweeps through the underbelly of America–relying on friends, family, and strangers alike–she begins to excavate a new identity even as her past continues to trail her and color her world, relationships, and perceptions of self.
At once razor-sharp, profoundly brave, and often very, very funny, the essays in Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing interrogate our notions of ecstasy, queerness, and what it means to live freely. Each piece is a reckoning: of survival, identity, and how to reclaim one’s past when carving out a future.
AUDIO BOOK NOW AVAILABLE
Cate Blanchett joins Lauren Hough in narrating “Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing”
“I well understood Lauren’s hypnotic power as a storyteller, but in speaking her words, I truly understood the rhythmic heartbeat alive in every phrase.”
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CONTACTS
Agents:
Jamie Chambliss | Folio lit
Jamie@foliolit.com
Steve Troha | Folio Lit
Steve@foliolit.com
Michiko Clark | Publicist
miclark@penguinrandomhouse.com
Photography & Web Design by Karl Poss