The queen behind one of the greatest RuPaul's Drag Race reveals of all time has something up her (book) sleeve.
Like a handful of rose petals tumbling out of a wig to Whitney Houston's "So Emotional," EW can exclusively reveal the cover art for Sasha Velour's upcoming book The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag, which the season 9 winner designed herself with photography by Tanner Abel and Nicholas J. Needham.
Billed as a hybrid collection touching on drag history and gender theory through written words and visual art, The Big Reveal serves as a chronicle of the industry's collective queer past, a tool of liberation, and a personal memoir for Sasha. Within chapters with titles like "Ritual," "Drama," "Costume," "Queen," "Camp," and "Revolution," Sasha breaks down the art form's complex roots from Kabuki to ballroom culture.
She also delves into her experience as a gender-fluid drag queen who rose to international prominence on RuPaul's Drag Race before touring the world with her successful Smoke & Mirrors show and launching her NightGowns docuseries.
"If we want to be seen as legendary, we have to weave ourselves into larger narratives," she writes in the book. "Drag simply dramatizes the ways in which we really can make choices of expression and feeling for ourselves. It shows us who 'we really are' and how people 'see us' aren't fixed realities... Drag embodies the queer possibility that exists within each of us — the infinite ways in which gender, good taste, and art can be lived."
The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag will release in April via HarperCollins. See EW's exclusive reveal of the cover art above, and listen to our Twitter Spaces interview with Sasha above.
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