Hi. I’m Nash. I wrote Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos.

When Foster Dade arrives at Kennedy, an elite boarding school in New Jersey, the year is 2008. Barack Obama begins his first term as president. Kanye West’s “Graduation” bumps from the newly debuted iPhone; teenagers share confidences and rumors over BlackBerry Messenger and iChat. The internet as we know it today is slowly emerging from its cocoon. So, too, is Foster emerging—a transfer student and lonely young man, Foster is stumbling through adolescence in the wake of his parents’ scandalous divorce and his own budding anxiety disorders. But Foster soon finds himself in the company of Annabeth Whittaker and Jack Albright, the twin centers of Kennedy’s social gravity, who take him under their wing to navigate the cliques and politics of the carelessly entitled.

Eighteen months later, Foster will be expelled, following a tragic scandal that leaves Kennedy and its students irreparably changed. But when a nameless student inherits Foster’s old dorm room, he begins an epic yearslong investigation into what exactly happened. Through Foster’s blog posts, playlists, text archives, and interviews with former classmates, and the narrator’s own obsessive imagination, a story unfurls—Foster’s, yes, but also one that asks us who owns our personal narratives, and how we shape ourselves to be the heroes or villains of our own stories.

Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos is about privilege and power, the pitfalls of masculinity and its expectations, and, most distinctly, how we create the mythologies that give meaning to our lives. With his debut novel, Nash Jenkins brilliantly captures the emotional intensities of adolescence in the dizzying early years of the twenty-first century.

Some nice things people have said:

“Smart, and complex, and poignant.” – CURTIS SITTENFELD (via Twitter), New York Times bestselling author of Prep and Romantic Comedy

“In this striking debut, Nash Jenkins captures the rarefied world of an East Coast boarding school with uncanny specificity. But in mining this privileged milieu, Jenkins unearths something universal: An exploration of the teenage tendency to self-mythologize that’s funny, heartbreaking, and real.”―Sam Lansky, author of Broken People

“A fresh and acutely observed portrait of a modern young man. Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos throbs with candor and longing.”―Julia May Jonas, author of Vladimir

“Nash Jenkins’s preternatural understanding of America’s upper class lets us see what’s really going on beneath all those layers of Ralph Lauren and Yves St. Laurent. Full of teenaged yearning and the myths we make long into adulthood, Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos delivers on its ambition—and then some.”―Rafael Frumkin, author of Confidence and The Comedown

“Stylistic flourishes in the form of playlists, legal papers, and entries from Foster’s blog provide a convincing...panorama of the school’s microcosm . . . Jenkins proves to be a keen world builder and a mostly engaging raconteur.”
 Publishers Weekly

“Ambitious . . . [A] finely observed account of teen angst and awkward sex in an academically demanding environment marked by privilege and cliques and the cruelty they breed.”
 Kirkus Reviews

“[An] exhilarating debut novel. . . If Holden Caulfield had been dropped into the Obama era, he might be Foster Dade.” The National Book Review

“[A] joy to read. . . A compelling mystery that uncovers the harmful reaches of privilege, power, and toxic masculinity.” Chicago Review of Books