Hot Girls with Balls A Novel

In this outrageous and deeply serious satire, two star indoor volleyball players juggle unspoken jealousies in their off-court romance ahead of their rival teams’ first rematch in a year

Six is 6’7”, scheming to rejoin the starting lineup, and barely checks her phone. Green is 6’1”, always building her brand, and secretly jealous of her more famous girlfriend. They’re gutsy, gorgeous babes going where no Asian American trans woman has gone before: the men’s pro indoor volleyball league. Six and Green are… hot girls with balls.

In between their rival teams' away games across the globe, they stay connected on SpaceTime and selflessly broadcast their romance with fans on their weekly Instagraph live show. After a long season, they’ll finally reunite for the championship tournament, the first to accommodate in-person fans since the COVIS pandemic struck the world a year ago. Just as they enter an airtight bro bubble of the world’s best, they’re faced with a public crisis that demands an indisputably humiliating task: make a public statement online.

Can Green stock up enough clout for her post-ball future? Can Six girlboss her team’s seniority politics? Can they both take a timeout to just grieve? Their rabid fans and horny haters await their next move. We’re all just desperate for a whiff of the feminine sweaty energy that makes that ball thwack with such spectacular force.

BENEDICT NGUYỄN is a dancer and gym regular. Between pistol squats and muscle ups, she works as a creative producer in live performance. She’s written for The Baffler, BOMB, Los Angeles Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The Brooklyn Rail, AAWW’s The Margins, and more. In 2022, she published the redacted email zine on freelance labor, nasty notes. Hot Girls with Balls is her first novel.