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Books

You can read my work in these 📚

Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class

2018

"Indie icon Michelle Tea shares these fierce, honest, tender essays written by women who can’t go home to the suburbs when ends don’t meet. When jobs are scarce and the money has dwindled, these writers have nowhere to go but below the poverty line.

These wide-ranging essays cover everything from selling blood for grocery money to the culture shock of ‘jumping’ class. Contributors include Dorothy Allison, Bee Lavender, Eileen Myles, and more."

The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook

2021

"Pittsburgh is made up of more than ninety different neighborhoods. And while The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook can’t detail every last one of them, it does its best, exploring the contrasts and contradictions that define the city’s neighborhoods and how they play out through the personal narratives of those who live there."

An Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove: An International Anthology of Short Stories

2023

"International, award-winning short-story writer and novelist Jayanthi Sankar edits this powerful collection. These stories are written by some of the finest short fiction writers from around the globe and are sure to change how you see both the tender and sharp edges of the world, no matter where you live."

Diary of the Last Woman on Earth

2023

"A woman wakes up trapped, and strangely transformed, in a stripped-out mirror image of her own apartment. The story of her escape — aided by her cat, which has gained the ability to talk, and by an omniscient, invisible, text-messaging entity —  is desperate, paranoid, sweet, unsettling, and beautifully surreal."

 

Praise

 

These women are not simply simulating scenes of poverty for the reader; they experienced it and now they own it as one constant facet of their diverse identities.

PopMatters

Through these painful shared realities, Without a Net offers readers hope and truth in a time when both are increasingly hard to find.

Bust

As the city continues to change, this collection will remain as a touchstone and snapshot of who we were, and the collection’s last line from Rowan will continue to echo: ‘Why would anyone want to kill a creature as beautiful as us?’

Pittsburgh City Paper