Tomas Moniz with Tessa Hulls

Tomas Moniz discusses his latest novel with local author and friend of the store Tessa Hulls. All Friends Are Necessary is a commanding new story about the power of friendship, community, and the families we create for ourselves. In All Friends Are Necessary, Efren “Chino” Flores has just moved back to the Bay Area from Seattle, jumping from sublet to sublet. In Washington, he was a beloved middle school biology teacher with a loving wife and a child on the way until a stunning loss changed his life. Now he’s working temp jobs and struggling to put himself back out into the world. But there to nurture Chino is a coterie of new and old friends and lovers who form a protective web around him. Closest to him are Metal Matt, a red-haired metalhead with a soft spot for Courtney Love and a rangy dog named Sabbath, and Mike and Kay, a couple whose literary edge is matched only by the success of their secret OnlyFans account. As Chino begins to date more men and women—and to open himself up again to love—his bonds with other people grow both rich and profound. Like a fern blooming in the wake of a forest fire, new life comes after even the most devastating upheaval. With gorgeous, heartrending detail and a seemingly infinite catalogue of tender, unexpected interactions, Tomas Moniz has created a striking mosaic of desire and belonging. An anthem to both queer and platonic love, All Friends Are Necessary evinces the wonder of friendship and the joy of giving yourself up to the essential force of community. Tomas Moniz is a Latinx writer living in Oakland, CA. His debut novel, Big Familia, was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway, the LAMBDA, and the Foreward Indies Awards. He edited the popular Rad Dad and Rad Families anthologies. He is the recipient of the prestigious SF Literary Arts Foundation’s 2016 Award and the 2020 Artist Affiliate for Headlands Center for Arts. He currently teaches at Berkeley City College and the Antioch MFA program. Tessa Hulls is an artist, writer, and adventurer who is equally likely to disappear into the backcountry or a research library. Her essays and comics have appeared in The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, Adventure Journal, The Rumpus, and Electric Lit, and she is the creator of Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir. She has received grants from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, 4Culture, and the McMillen Foundation, been awarded residencies from Hedgebrook, Yaddo, and Ucross, and is a recipient of the Washington Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award.

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