
LeslieJillPatterson
REVIEWS
​
​
​
"From the introduction to the final sentence, Leslie Jill Patter-son’s flash essay, “Study in Self-Defense: Lubbock, Texas,” pub-lished in the September 2019 issue of Brevity (Issue 62), kept me on the edge of my seat. . . . From the moment of her dog’s jolt from a sound sleep to an adrenaline punched awakening, the reader finds themselves breathless as her “lesson” un-folds. . . . A thrill to read."
​
Kelsie Peterson
newpages.com
​
​
​
​
"Target" is a compelling, rele-vant story. On one level it's a study in quietly placed wistful- ness, placing the reader in its center. The author creates a space that facilitates an experi- ence of empathy. On another level, it's a profound exposé of why we make the choices we make, and how, in the face of consequence, we are able—when we are able—to make peace with these choices.
​
Jill Alexander Essbaum
Able Muse
​
​
​
​
​
In my forty-four years of teach-ing and editing, I’ve read count-less stories about abused wom- en but never one like "Brace Yourself." Without a single scene of abuse (and the sensa-tionalism such scenes almost inevitably create), the story parses its soul-shattering ef-fects. At one point, the narrator says, "It’s odd, even savage, how lies are sometimes tender while truth can surprise you, like a backhand across the cheek." This story surprises us with just such a truth. Reader, brace yourself.
David Jauss
Prime Number Magazine
​
​
​
​
​
​
Leslie Jill Patterson’s "We Know the Drill," arguably the book’s most masterful essay, weaves personal narrative with threads about All in the Family, Lorena Bobbitt, and the portrayal of heterosexual marriage in tele-vision: it’s a powerhouse of an essay, more relevant—even pre-scient, in light of the Steuben-ville rape case—now more than ever."
J. Capo Crucet
Pank
​
​
​
​
​
In Leslie Jill Patterson’s "We Know the Drill," this genre of writing has a masterpiece, a study of sitcom-husband tropes that interweaves personal stories of physical, sexual, and emo-tional abuse, cannily exposing TV’s failures at cultural instruc-tion where it’s most necessary. "Drill" is emblematic of the most expert pieces in this collection, which foreground the personal without being narcissistic. That’s a liberating idea for the cultural essay—criticism that makes art its starting point but not its destination.
Mark Athitakis
Washington City Paper
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Trouble Is a Friend of Mine is full of rich writing and a deep under-standing of the crooked kind we are. I like, too, the manuscript's emphasis on the necessity of story, that one of the ways we best understand ourselves is by throwing some English at real life to see what remains between margins when the fever dissi-pates. . . . I fell in love early and often with these people—flawed and fetching and determined to go forward even as the past lies in still smoking ruins."
Lee K. Abbott
Everett Southwest Award
​
​
Read selections from my mountain stories and essays right here.