Samantha Josephs's first novel has had a busy week, and it is not even out yet. This week the Center for Fiction named Carrying to the shortlist for its 2026 First Novel Prize. The next day, Variety reported that the book is getting a feature adaptation from Tommy Dorfman's Good Girl Productions. G. P. Putnam's Sons publishes the novel on Tuesday, October 6.
The book
Carrying is a horror comedy. Its heroine, Martha, is a trans woman whose transition is so private that even her family does not know. In the publisher's logline, quoted by Variety, "She carved the woman she is out of the marble of a boy, and she'll do whatever it takes to protect what she's built." When a mysterious chronic illness pushes her into experimental treatments, she discovers she is "undeniably, impossibly pregnant."
Josephs told the Los Angeles Daily News that she wrote the book to answer a specific insult. "I wanted to tackle a common transphobic taunt: that a trans woman cannot be a woman because she can't get pregnant," she said. "I hope trans women will find a home in this book."
The title, she explained, works three ways. It refers to carrying a pregnancy, to carrying an illness, and to the ballroom slang in which "carrying" means doing something so well that you have blown away the competition. "Martha is carrying in every sense of the word!" she said.
She was also candid about how the book's body horror lands with some readers. "My own grandparents told me it was the most disgusting thing they'd ever read," she said.
"For a book that I know is extremely out there, it feels especially touching that she sees it and Martha so completely."
The film
Dorfman, an actor and filmmaker best known for her roles in 13 Reasons Why and Jane the Virgin, launched Good Girl Productions in 2025, according to Variety. Its slate also includes a feature adaptation of Torrey Peters's novel Detransition, Baby and a film based on Allie Rowbottom's thriller Aestetica.
"From our very first meeting, it wasn't just Tommy's love for 'Carrying' that got me, but that she completely understood it," Josephs told Variety. "For a book that I know is extremely out there, it feels especially touching that she sees it and Martha so completely."
The author
Josephs is a New York native who now lives in Los Angeles, where the novel is set. Variety reported that she graduated from the University of Southern California's Writing for the Screen and Television program and worked in podcasts, video games, apps and erotica before writing Carrying.
She launches the book at Skylight Books in Los Angeles on Monday, October 5, in conversation with the actor Jamie Clayton, she told the Orange County Register. And she is not stopping at one. Her second book is already written, she told the Daily News, and it is "a complete left turn" into a new genre.
Carrying by Samantha Josephs (G. P. Putnam's Sons) is published October 6. Sources: Variety, Los Angeles Daily News, Orange County Register, Penguin Random House.
Reported by the RedSquibble books desk from the publications and announcements linked in this story.
