Please Don’t Be Upset is a collection of fifteen perfectly rendered stories–lists, instructions, yearnings, confessions, more–stories about imperfect mothers and daughters, women and men, strange stories about folded bodies and stalking deer, stories about the small, heartbreaking ways we fail each other, yet cling so tightly.
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What people are saying:
“In stories often disguised as instruction manuals, as apologies and confessions, as notes left behind, Brandi Wells creates a world of tempting baubles, each tiny fiction begging to be discovered, to be stolen away, to be secreted safe and treasured.”
—Matt Bell, author of Cataclysm Baby and How They Were Found
Brandi Wells debuts with an intense collection in Please Don’t Be Upset. Her characters are bold imaginings, facing the worst of scenarios and willing themselves through, victorious. Every story is a surprise and a smack in the face, a killer combination that wounds you but also makes you stronger.
–Michael Czyzniejewski, author of Elephants in Our Bedroom and Chicago Stories
Please Don’t Be Upset is your kid sister ambling up to you playing your big kid games in the sandbox and smiling at you like you’ve known her your whole life and so she’s smiling and you’re smiling and the sandbox is smiling and while everyone is smiling, there she is, whispering in your ear tales of horror and woe, of heartbreak and fortitude, of baldness and contorting ballerinas and deer in the bedroom and deer on the lawn and bodies piled in places they ought not to be piled, of cereal and anger, of regret, of love, of clouds that might be people, of how to properly and improperly pawn a wedding ring, and of the stuff lives, not dreams, are made of.
—Sasha Fletcher, author of When All Our Days Are Numbered Marching Bands Will Fill The Streets & We Will Not Hear Them Because We Will Be Upstairs In The Clouds
Tiny Hardcore Press Tuscaloosa Promo from Be Xo on Vimeo.
CONTENTS
Instructional
Beautiful
Some Love Stories
Claim
A Conversation With My Obligation
Deer
A Dozen Notes to Ruben
Changing Woman
Contortionist Ballerina
Bald
Beetles
Thanks Again
Sock Addiction
Seven Things I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You
Please Don’t be Upset
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