Lee Conell

Lee Conell writes fiction attentive to class, work, family expectation, and the spaces people occupy unequally. The Party Upstairs, her debut novel, unfolds across one day inside an Upper West Side cooperative building. Ruby, the superintendent’s daughter, has returned to her parents’ basement apartment after college, while her childhood friend Caroline prepares a gathering in the penthouse. Alternating attention between Ruby and her father Martin, the novel contrasts residents’ assumptions with the labor that keeps their home functioning. Penguin Press issued the hardcover in 2020, and Penguin Books followed with a paperback in 2021. Conell previously published Subcortical, a story collection recognized by The Story Prize’s Spotlight Award. Her short fiction has also received the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, and she held a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. In The Party Upstairs, the building acts as more than a backdrop: floors, keys, repairs, debt, and access reveal how affection and resentment are shaped by economic position.