Margins
So We Can Glow book cover
So We Can Glow
Stories
2020
First Published
3.90
Average Rating
208
Number of Pages

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. We, moons—The Great Barrier Reef is dying but so are we—Unknown legend—Low, small—A tennis court—Tim Riggins would've smoked—Surreptitious, canary, chamomile—Winona forever—Girlheart cake with glitter frosting—Fast as you—Chateau Marmont, champagne, Chanel—Bearish—All that smoke howling blue—Pink bubblegum and flowers—Knock out the heart lights so we can glow—Get rowdy—Re: little doves—Out of the strong, something sweet—The lengths—Small and high up—Small are dark, some are light, summer melts—Bright—Dark and sweaty and dirty—Home safe—Teenage dreams time machine—Rope burns—Get Faye & Birdie—The Darl Inn—You should love the right things—And down we go! — Crepuscular—Stay and stay and stay—Two cherries under a lavender moon—When it gets warm—Boy smoke—Dandelion light—California, keep us—Cloud report—Downright—You got me—Eine kleine nachmusik—A girl has her secrets—Vincent

Avg Rating
3.90
Number of Ratings
1,321
5 STARS
33%
4 STARS
35%
3 STARS
23%
2 STARS
7%
1 STARS
2%
goodreads

Author

Leesa Cross Smith
Leesa Cross Smith
Author · 8 books
Leesa Cross-Smith is a homemaker and writer from Kentucky. She is the author of seven books: GOODBYE EARL, HALF-BLOWN ROSE, THIS CLOSE TO OKAY, SO WE CAN GLOW, WHISKEY & RIBBONS, EVERY KISS A WAR, and the forthcoming AS YOU WISH. HALF-BLOWN ROSE received Coups De Cœur recognition from the American Library in Paris and was the Amazon Editors’ Spotlight for June 2022, the inaugural pick for Amazon’s Editorial Director Sarah Gelman’s Book Club Sarah Selects, and the Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick for June 2022. THIS CLOSE TO OKAY was a Goodreads Choice 2021 Nominee for Best Fiction, a Book of the Month Book of the Year 2021 Nominee, a Book of the Month Early Release Pick for December 2020, the Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick for February 2021 and the Marie Claire Book Club Pick for March 2021. She was longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize and SO WE CAN GLOW was listed as one of NPR's Best Books of 2020. WHISKEY & RIBBONS won the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) Gold Medal in Literary Fiction, was longlisted for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was one of O Magazine's 2018 Top Books of Summer. EVERY KISS A WAR was nominated for the PEN Open Book Award (2014) and was a finalist for both the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction (2012) and the Iowa Short Fiction Award (2012). Find more @ LeesaCrossSmith.com
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