Teen Queen Training: Essays after The Seventeen Book of Etiquette and Entertaining
Autofocus Books, February 17. 2026
Order your copy through Autofocus Books, The Bookworm, or request it at your local bookstore/library!
It takes a lot of work to erase the rules of being a teenage girl.
Desperate to know what behaviors would produce the “right” adolescence, during the late 1990s Kristine Langley Mahler sought instruction from outdated etiquette guides and Seventeen magazine to subdue her central fear: how to convince someone to choose her. Twenty years later, married and mothering three adolescent daughters of her own, Mahler stumbles upon a 1963 edition of The Seventeen Book of Etiquette and Entertaining—elegant, archaic directives that push her right back into her old frustrations and propel the creation of Teen Queen Training: a series of 26 erasure essays created from its 26 chapters, illuminating the differences between what she was told and what she really learned.
If you suffered the indignity of grinding to Ginuwine at your Willy Wonka-themed prom instead of being waltzed across a dancefloor, gilt-edged dance card dangling at your wrist; if you obsessed over Seventeen articles like “True crush to true love: make it happen!” but couldn’t bring yourself to even talk to your crush; if you decided the only way to handle the disappointing record of your adolescence was to erase-erase-erase until the truth remained, then BUDDY, DO I HAVE THE BOOK FOR YOU!
Praise for Teen Queen Training
“From the chapters of an overwrought 1963 etiquette manual for girls, Kristine Langley Mahler has gifted us with a series of concise, insightful, and often playful texts that turn the mirror back on the contrivance of its source material. In Teen Queen Training, Mahler serves as a different kind of guide from the original—wise, knowing, and experienced in navigating the minefield of instruction, expectations, and limitations that American girlhood can be. ‘The real problem for every unattached female,’ she tells us, ‘is the expectation that a kiss has value.’ Mahler finds the pointed needles of language in each haystack of admonition, reminding us that the messy and problematic artifacts of our past can—and perhaps must be—inverted, subverted, and made new.”
—Mary-Kim Arnold, author of Litany for the Long Moment
“Using subversive technique, Mahler’s Teen Queen Training transforms the prescriptive advice of a mid-century etiquette manual about how young women are taught to be. Form meets content in these essays, where the act of crossing out becomes a critique of the very lessons meant to shape girlhood. Inventive and haunting, Teen Queen Training is a bold look into the possibilities of the genre.”
—LaTanya McQueen, author of And It Begins Like This
Articles/Interviews re: Teen Queen Training
Teen Queen Training Reading Events/Tour
’90s Vibes, 2026 Books, Zoom
Wednesday, February 11, 8pm
with Stephanie Austin, Chelsea Sutton, Lauren Westerfield, and Maya Jewell Zeller
register here: tinyurl.com/90svibes
Marian High School, Omaha NE
Tuesday, February 17, 3:30pm
The Bookworm, Omaha NE
Sunday, February 22, 2pm
in conversation with Jody Keisner
Lilith @ AWP26 Offsite Reading, Baltimore MD
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Theater
Thursday, March 5, 5pm
with Melissa Flores Anderson, Danielle Ariano, Stephanie Austin, Avitus B Carle, Jillian Danback-McGhan, Lilly Dancyger, Melissa Faliveno, Beth Gilstrap, Liz Kay, Judith Krummeck, Sienna Liu, Amy Rossi, Natalia Trevino, and Lauren Woods
Literary Spring at Sacred Heart University, Bridgeport CT
Wednesday, April 1, 2pm and 3:30pm
Desert Grit Reading Series at Rift Wine Bar, Phoenix AZ
Saturday, April 18, 6:30pm
with Joe Hans, Oscar Mancinas, and Cecilia Savala
Kearney Public Library, Kearney NE
Thursday, May 14, 12pm
Kristine Langley Mahler 