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BREVITY

"Study in Self-Defense"

Fall 2019

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PUSHCART XLIII

"Brace Yourself"

Fall 2018

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ABLE MUSE

"Target"

winner, Able Muse Write Now Prize

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under the gum tree

"Remote Control"

notable, Best American Essays 2018

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1966

"On Forgiving"

reprinted in Her Texas

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GULF COAST

"Planting the Seed"

a roundtable on death penalty narratives

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THE NEW GUARD

"Catch and Release"

finalist, Machigonne Fiction Award

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SMOKELONG QUARTERLY

"What Manner of Triumph"

with interview

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TEXAS MONTHLY

"The Break-In"

serial story

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HOTEL AMERIKA

"No Men Were Harmed in the Making of 78/52"

Spring 2019

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SWEET

"Running" and "Heat"

Spring 2018

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PRIME NUMBER MAGAZINE

"Brace Yourself"

winner, PNM Fiction Award

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THE RUMPUS

"We Aren't Killers; They Are"

The Saturday Essay, Spring 2017

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CREATIVE NONFICTION

"Writing for Life"

how narrative law is transforming defense

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LITERATURE: a pocket anthology

"The Fires We Can't Control"

originally appeared in Colorado Review

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BALTIMORE REVIEW

"Mirage"

Essay in the "Heat" Issue

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BRING THE NOISE

"We Know the Drill"

the best pop cult essays from Barrelhouse

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REVIEWS

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"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."

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Kelsie Peterson

newpages.com

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"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.

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Jill Alexander Essbaum

  Able Muse

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Read selections from my mountain stories and essays right here.

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