Headliner

After her debut set brought down the house at a South Side bar, Koko has thrown herself into comedy - open mics two to three nights a week, short clips building a following, material that mines her life with increasing honesty and craft. But the comedy world has its own economy, its own hierarchies, its own particular forms of exploitation.

Being the funny trans girl at an open mic gets attention. Being taken seriously as a comedian - getting booked, getting paid, getting mentored - requires navigating a world that wants her story as content but not necessarily her as a peer. A well-connected comedy booker sees her potential and begins developing her, but the mentorship comes with strings. A TV producer reaches out about a "trans comedian docu-series" that would pay well but would flatten Koko's complexity into a digestible narrative.

Meanwhile, Koko is still doing sex work to fund the comedy career, and the collision between those two worlds drives everything: a client shows up at a show. A comedy friend discovers what she does. A set about sex work goes viral and her mother sees it.

And underneath it all, like a bassline she can't quite tune out, is the sobriety she's fighting for - one good stretch, one relapse, one devastating night performing drunk at a time.

HEADLINER alternates between narrative chapters and transcripts of Koko's evolving stand-up sets, tracking the gap between lived truth and performed truth. As the book progresses, the gap narrows - until in the final set, there is no gap at all.

The third novel in the Posted Up series - five standalone novels about Black and Latina trans women in Chicago, connected by community, survival, and the refusal to disappear.