{"id":165031,"date":"2026-08-13T14:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T19:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=165031"},"modified":"2026-08-13T14:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T19:07:09","slug":"hallie-elizabeth-newton-reads-and-signs-debut-novel-agnes-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/hallie-elizabeth-newton-reads-and-signs-debut-novel-agnes-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Hallie Elizabeth Newton Reads and Signs Debut Novel, &#8220;Agnes Lives!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Mississippi author <strong>Hallie Elizabeth Newton<\/strong>&#8216;s <strong><em>Agnes Lives!<\/em> <\/strong>is a day-in-the-life novel about a fading socialite on the hunt for someone to kill her before her next SoulCycle class.\u00a0Newton will be at <strong>Off Square Books at 5:30 pm Tuesday, August 25<\/strong> to read and sign copies of the book.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Square Books general\u00a0manager <strong>Lyn Roberts<\/strong> describes the book as\u00a0&#8220;a frenetic, darkly funny novel about the struggles of young women,\u00a0loneliness, and the emptiness of society\u2014even, or rather especially,\u00a0for those who seem to have everything. With echoes of <em>Bright Lights, Big\u00a0City<\/em> and <em>Ulysses<\/em>, this is a brilliant debut from a new Mississippi\u00a0talent.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Set in New York City in 2014, the book centers on Agnes Maurer, who seeks a willing murderer and&nbsp;wonders what she should wear. Candidates include: an icy magazine&nbsp;editor with a special cutlery set; an eccentric designer from her past;&nbsp;and Agnes&#8217;s cruel novelist boyfriend. As she Ubers from Upper East&nbsp;Side shopping to Craigslist gun deals, Agnes&#8217; desperation becomes an&nbsp;exhibition, a swan song of millennial sexuality as internalized abuse&nbsp;and consummate style, with the knob righty-tightened all the way.&nbsp;Newton&#8217;s prose is disturbingly fun, relentless, and shattering; the story a crafted&nbsp;study of existential despair that culminates in a worthy, intense denouement.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hallie Elizabeth Newton received her first screenplay credit for <em>At Any Price<\/em>, released in 2013 by Sony Picture Classics. In 2016, she received the <strong>Goldwater Fellowship<\/strong> to earn a master\u2019s in creative writing from <strong>New York University<\/strong>. Her short story \u201cMan Made\u201d won first prize for fiction in the <em>Columbia Journal<\/em> 2020 Winter Contest. Her work is forthcoming from <em>American Chordata<\/em>. She lives between New York and the Deep South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"25\" height=\"16\" class=\"wp-image-14544\" style=\"width: 25px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg?resize=25%2C16\" alt=\"\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mississippi author Hallie Elizabeth Newton&#8216;s Agnes Lives! is a day-in-the-life novel about a fading socialite on the hunt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":165033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35027],"tags":[35605,35603,35604,5,35606,13759,4],"class_list":["post-165031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-upcoming-events","tag-agnes-lives","tag-author-events","tag-hallie-elizabeth-newton","tag-mississippi","tag-mississippi-author","tag-off-square-books-2","tag-oxford"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Hallie-Elizabeth-Newton.png?fit=900%2C900&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165031"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165038,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165031\/revisions\/165038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}