Christmas cake (noun): 1) a holiday dessert considered stale the day after Christmas; 2) Japanese slang term for an unmarried woman over 25.

Christmas cake (noun): 1) a holiday dessert considered stale the day after Christmas; 2) Japanese slang term for an unmarried woman over 25 ( as in "spinster" or "cat lady")

Petra Hanson’s autobiographical short film Xmas Cake—This American Shelf-life premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, where it was nominated for Best Documentary Short. It was an official selection of the 2019 Mill Valley Film Festival, then toured the US in 2020 with LUNAFEST, the traveling festival of films by and about women. 

Xmas Cake is a post-feminist rockumentary about sisterhood, female aging, and reclaiming power under the spotlight, as Petra flips a label meant to diminish her and writes her own ending.

Watch the film…

Private screener available upon request.  

Xmas Cake, the Book is an upmarket autobiographical novel with sharp humor and music-industry sparkle, following a New York fashion designer who becomes an accidental pop star in Japan. The rise is dazzling. The crash is public. The rebuilding after 40 is fierce. 

It’s for Millennial and Gen X readers who love voice-driven reinvention stories, with backstage access to fashion and pop music and a heroine who turns every label meant to shrink her into fuel.

Word count: 95,031 

Credentials

- Tribeca Film Festival 2019: Xmas Cake—This American Shelf-life (Doc Short nominee)

- The Moth Mainstage (story based on the project)

- Sony Japan signing with Gaijin à Go Go (historic “unknown foreign act” angle)

- Festival runway: Mill Valley Film Festival + LUNAFEST

- Platform/community: The B/sider newsletter/podcast (optional if you want a 5th)

Xmas Cake, the Book is a "coming of middle age" story for Gen X, Millennials, and parents of Gen Z daughters and anyone who's ever felt the pressure of an "expiration date" in America. 

In a world still selling Bachelor-style happily-ever-afters, happily-ever-afters, it offers a bold, subversive spin: a sharp, funny, post-Y2K nostalgia soaked reinvention story for readers who don’t want the rom-com ending, they want a new kind of heroine.

Petra Hanson is a native New Yorker, writer and filmmaker, and former pop singer in Japan. In 2003, her band Gaijin à Go Go made history as the only unknown foreign act ever signed to Sony Japan, with appearances across major Japanese TV and radio and coverage in outlets like The Japan Times. Her work has been featured on The Moth Mainstage, and she wrote and produced the Tribeca nominated short film Xmas Cake, This American Shelf-life, which inspired her forthcoming autobiographical novel. She holds a BFA from Cornell and studied at FIT, is a member of ASCAP, and publishes The B/sider, a project reimagining life after “after hitting the top forty.” 

Petra splits her time between Brooklyn and Costa Rica, where she writes. She still performs with her reunited band, with recent shows including the Mill Valley Film Festival, Sweetwater Music Hall, and Live at the Archway in DUMBO.