Desperate Bodies: Stories

**Inaugural Winner of Cultured Mag’s Young Writer Prize**
**"Broke my heart from the very first page . . . literary shock and awe at its finest.”—Deesha Philyaw, author of *The Confessions of First Lady Freeman* and *The Secret Lives of Church Ladies***
**From a ferocious new talent, a debut story collection excavating the desire, humor, and horror in the everyday lives of Black women and girls—for readers of Deesha Philyaw and Kelly Link**
With a voice that vibrates on the page, Lydia Mathis’ debut collection is set in the American South and her sharply drawn, authentic characters shine a light on what we’re willing to do to ourselves and to others in service of our desires. The madness in the ordinary rules here: an overworked college safety officer is confronted by a bloody figure who walks into her office; a sex worker runs into a client en route to a parent-teacher conference; a teacher is plagued by a ghost determined to tidy her apartment.
*Desperate Bodies* depicts the fragility, strength, and unruliness of Black women and girls’ bodies and the power in being honest about their desires. In unflinching prose, Mathis takes a frank and determined look at what it means to be subjected to imbalances of power through the perspectives of young girls and adult women. With surprising turns and a touch of the supernatural, these stories refuse to look away from the most honest, raw moments of womanhood.
Visceral and unyielding, *Desperate Bodies* is a thrillingly dark ride that introduces Lydia Mathis as a major new writer.