Chelsea Frank

ABOUT THE BOOK

When Girl, Interrupted meets Girls.

Darkly funny, provocative, and emotionally raw, Baby Steps is a debut novel about what happens when the coping mechanism that once helped you survive becomes the very thing preventing you from living. It’s also a story of unexpected pregnancy, eating disorder recovery, queer love, and chosen family. 

Avery Ash has spent years controlling her body, her appetite, and her relationships. Then she gets pregnant. A sharp, self-aware queer Jewish law student, Avery knows immediately that she wants to keep the baby. But when her eating disorder puts both her health and the pregnancy at risk, she enters residential treatment convinced she can outsmart recovery—doing just enough to protect the baby without surrendering the behaviors that have made her feel safe for years.

Instead, Avery finds herself thrown into a chaotic community of women and nonbinary patients whose friendships, rivalries, romances, secrets, and dark humor begin dismantling the carefully controlled life she’s built. As her pregnancy progresses and her body becomes increasingly impossible to manage, Avery must confront what her eating disorder has cost her, and whether she’s willing to give up control for the terrifying possibility of intimacy, motherhood, and a life she actually wants.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Writer Chelsea Frank was born and bullied in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of Baby Steps, a darkly funny debut novel about eating disorder recovery, unexpected pregnancy, queer love, and the messy ways we try to control our lives. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, Food & Wine, Business Insider, InStyle, Air Mail, Uproxx, and Brides, among others. She has also written for film and television and hosted the travel podcast Globe Thotting with Chelsea Frank. 

Chelsea is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at the University of San Francisco and lives in San Francisco with her dog, Bowie.

TALKING POINTS

• The reader experience of learning from fiction; how novels can teach us vital things
• Writing inspired by personal experience; what protagonist Avery Ash has in common with author Chelsea Frank–and what she doesn’t 
• A food writer with an eating disorder. Chelsea’s journey from eating disorder treatment to becoming a professional food and travel writer
• The food-centric holiday season and eating disorders
• How stereotypical portrayals of people with eating disorders can keep people from recognizing their own illness
• The funny, strange, uncomfortable realities of residential treatment 
• What pop culture gets wrong about eating disorders and why getting it right matters
• The myth of eating disorders being “easily” seen on the body when they live in the mind