Sweet. My essay from Alaska Quarterly Review WHAT ARE YOU? is listed as a Notable Essay in BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2019.
1. Found out my essay WHAT ARE YOU? published in Alaska Quarterly Review is listed as a Notable Essay in BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2019. Thank you editors and Alaska Quarterly Review ! Thank you Bonnie Nadzam! ❤️
1a. Immediately spilled a whole mug of tea on my nightstand bc life is a wild riiiiide. 🙃
👀 I wrote What Are You? abt shadow work...abt all kinds of crazy stuff ppl have said to me, abt growing up black in super-white spaces bc...whew it’s a LOT. I didn’t want to write it. I didn’t want to have to write it...but here we are...in America! 🇺🇸 I used to dream abt a mention in a book like this. I used to dream abt a lot of things. And I still do. And I will.✌🏾
COZY! COZY! COZY!
OXFORD AMERICAN: SOUTH WORDS! Little Rock, March 31, 2020!
WHISKEY & RIBBONS NOW AVAIL IN PAPERBACK!
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.
SOME ROOM TO BREATHE: IN PRAISE OF QUIET BOOKS
“In a noisy, confusing world where so many people love to constantly scream their opinions as loudly and as quickly as they can on social media, I am drawn to longer works that take their time. Ideas and situations that give me room to think. Characters and plots that require my patience and pay off in real, satisfying ways. I don’t like to be shocked or surprised on every page when I’m reading. I don’t necessarily need a big twist or reveal to be entertained. Don’t get me wrong: I love a good story—I’m not defending the boring and pointless—but I will always believe there is treasure to be found in small, quiet moments. In the rambling half-asleep conversations right before bed. The hushed confessionals on the way home from the awkward dinner party. A silent glance between lifelong partners. The whisper. “
You can read my essay on Quiet Books over @ Poets & Writers!
WHISKEY & RIBBONS PAPERBACK COVER REVEAL!
COMING THIS SUMMER! PRE-ORDER DEETS!
DUDE! WHISKEY & RIBBONS WINS THE GOLD IPPY AWARD FOR LITERARY FICTION!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO WHISKEY & RIBBONS!
WHISKEY & RIBBONS CAME OUT A YEAR AGO! Here's a super happy and proud pic of me outside Hub City Press last March! My new short story collection SO WE CAN GLOW comes out nxt year! Wow I get to write books! I mean how cool is that. Very. All love & bright things!