There is such authenticity to these stories and nostalgia that is tempered with just enough of a clear-eyed understanding of the world as it is, not just how we hoped it might be.

These are stories about breathless love, lustful abandon, all that glitters, hot summers, cool pavement, sticky skin, beautifully beating hearts. 'Leesa Cross-Smith is such a beguiling writer and her skills are on full display in So We Can Glow. The woman throughout this collection are constantly being revealed by a powerful inner light.' It is the strength of the female characters, though, that truly binds this collection together. Throughout, characters from earlier stories reappear to nudge us in the ribs, these rewarding inside jokes building depth and resonance. Cross-Smith's descriptions are filled with equal amounts of violence and tenderness. The dialogue winks and sparks on the page, making every story feel like a flirt. 'Though the 42 stories here often masquerade as slices of domestic life, the scale of the emotional trajectories is treated with the weight of the epic. They recall the intense friendships of teenage girls and the innate bonds between mothers, the first heady rush of desire, and the pure exhilaration of womanhood, all while holding up the wild souls of women so they can catch the light. Leesa Cross-Smith's sensuous stories - some long, some gone in a flash, some told over text and emails - drench readers in nostalgia for summer nights and sultry days. After the death of a sister, two high school friends kiss all night and binge-watch Winona Ryder movies.

A love story begins over cabbages in a grocery store, and a laundress's life is consumed by her obsession with a baseball star. A woman luxuriates in a fantasy getaway to escape her past.

Members of a cult form an unsettling chorus as they proclaim their adoration for the same man. On a hot July night, teenage girls sneak out of the house to meet their boyfriends by the train tracks. LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZEĪ lush, glittering short story collection exploring female obsession and desire by an award-winning author Roxane Gay calls 'a consummate storyteller.'įrom Kentucky to the California desert, these forty-two short stories - ranging from the 80's and 90's to present day - expose the hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness, and more.

So we can glow leesa cross smith