"Sycamore kicks mainstream literature in the teeth."--"The San Francisco Bay Guardian" Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's exhilarating new novel is about struggling to find hope in the ruins of everyday San Francisco--battling roaches, Bikram Yoga, chronically bad sex, NPR, internet cruising, tweakers, the cops, $100 bills, chronic pain, the gay vote, vegan restaurants, and incest, with the help of air-raid sirens, herbal medicine, late-night

epiphanies, sea lions, and sleeping pills. "So Many Ways to Sleep Badly" unveils a gender-bending queer world where nothing flows smoothly, except for those sudden moments when everything becomes lighter or brighter or easier to imagine.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the gender-bending author of the highly praised novel "Pulling Taffy "and the editor of the anthology "Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity." Sycamore writes regularly for a variety of publications, including "Bitch," "Utne Reader," "AlterNet," "Make/Shift," and "MaximumRocknRoll."