HALF-BLOWN ROSE ON A GIANT BILLBOARD IN NYC!!!!

I’m thrilled to share that Half-Blown Rose is an Amazon Books Editors’ Spotlight selection and it is on a billboard in NYC! More deets on the Editors’ Spotlight here!

AND! You can watch my Amazon Live Q&A w Sarah Gelman here too!

HALF-BLOWN ROSE IS OUT TODAY!!!! It's the Barnes & Noble June Book Club Pick and an Amazon Editors' Spotlight and the inaugural pick for Sarah Gelman's Sarah Selects Book Club @ Amazon too! xo

AVAIL IN HARDBACK/EBOOK/AUDIOBOOK WHEREVER YOU BUY YR BOOKS! xo

Putting Your Ear to the Tracks: A Conversation with Leesa Cross-Smith

JW: I’ve heard you say that when you begin to write a flash fiction piece, you have a flicker of an image in your mind. Was it the same way with this story?

LCS: Yes—the image that set the story off for me was a man standing at a window. It was snowing, and he was holding a baby. I could see it so vividly in my mind. Originally the guy was sort of like Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights. He was a little whiter than the brown baby he was holding, and the baby wasn’t his. So why was he holding this baby in the middle of the night? That’s how I write entire books, from an image like that.

I enjoyed my convo w Jessica Wilbanks over @ Catapult abt “Whiskey & Ribbons” and craft and you can read it here! x

THIS CLOSE TO OKAY is one of 10 most anticipated books of 2021, according to Goodreads

Goodreads says so and so does Today ! x

SO WE CAN GLOW in paperback: Jan 12, 2021! With readers guide and BONUS story!

SO WE CAN GLOW out in paperback on Jan 12, 2021!

W reading group guide and BONUS story “Vincent” which is also now a full-length novel called HALF-BLOWN ROSE out 2022! You can preorder SWCG from Carmichael’s Bookstore! x !

SO WE CAN GLOW COVER REVEAL!

I LOVE IT! IT’S SO PRETTY! And you read more abt it below and you can preorder it from yr local indie or from my local indie! xoxo https://www.carmichaelsbookstore.com/book/9781538715338

A lush, glittering short story collection exploring female obsession and desire by an award-winning writer Roxane Gay calls "a consummate storyteller."

From Kentucky to the California desert, these forty-two short stories expose the glossy and matte hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness, and more.

Teenage girls sneak out on a summer night to meet their boyfriends by the train tracks. A woman escapes suffocating grief through a vivid fantasy life. Members of a cult form an unsettling chorus as they extol their passion for the same man. A love story begins over cabbages in a grocery store. A laundress' life is consumed by obsession for a famous baseball player. Two high school friends kiss all night and binge-watch Winona Ryder movies after the death of a sister.

Leesa Cross-Smith's sensuous stories will drench readers in nostalgia for summer nights and sultry days, the intense friendships of teenage girls, and the innate bonds felt between women. She evokes the pangs of loss and motherhood, the headiness and destructive potential of desire, and the pure exhilaration of being female. The stories in So We Can Glow--some long, some gone in a flash, some told over text and emails--take the wild hearts of girls and women and hold them up so they can catch the light.

THE GREAT BARRIER REEF IS DYING BUT SO ARE WE

NOW AVAIL VIA PLATYPUS PRESS ! A story abt marriage and jealousy and mistakes (?), etc.

Minnie and her husband Adam were unusually quiet on their way home from the theatre. Adam was the actor, the star. Adam had to kiss his co-star Caitriona three times during the play because it was in the script. 

“Did you want something to eat?” Adam finally asked.

“I don't care,” Minnie said, staring out the window.

“Chinese? Greek? Maybe a burger?” Adam asked, taking his finger and pointing to the restaurants as they passed them.

“Well, too late now. There they go,” Minnie said, fussily flicking her hand and waving to the restaurants, their signs. Shadows of people. Lurking. Waiting. Too hungry or too full.

“I can go back,” he said, tapping the brake gently. Slowing.

“Nope. I'll eat something at home.”

“Are you angry with me?” he asked as he let off the brake, gunned the car forward.

It was late. A Thursday night hinting at a stormy early morning. As they'd walked out of the theatre, the sky had been a black-violet dream. The diamond stars, out just long enough to create wonder, were now hidden behind smoke-grey puffs slipping across the missing moon.