Celia Laskey

Celia Laskey uses satire to examine belonging, social pressure, and the stories communities tell about happiness. Hanover Square Press issued So Happy for You in 2022. Robin, a queer academic, is skeptical of the extravagant wedding culture surrounding her childhood friend Ellie. When Robin agrees to serve as maid of honor, increasingly ominous rituals and expectations turn the celebration into a darkly comic test of friendship. Laskey combines suspense with an exaggerated near-future culture in which marriage is treated as a public duty and personal worth is measured through ceremonial perfection. Her earlier novel Under the Rainbow reached the finalist list for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and explored tensions in a Kansas town identified as unusually hostile to gay residents. So Happy for You extends her interest in conformity through a sharper thriller structure, asking how loyalty survives when intimacy, tradition, and public performance begin to demand incompatible things.