The Complete Stories
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Our Story Begins
A Compendium of Skirts, Dressing Up for the Carnival in the Land of Men, City of Boys, Out of the Girls’ Room and into The Night, Characters on the Loose; Single, Carefree, Mellow; Asking for Love, Instant Love, Some Fun!
Who Do You Love?
Cowboys are my Weakness Because They Wanted to Stay Up with Me,
Use Me, In the Gloaming, In the House of Blue Lights, Curled in the Bed of Love, Pretending the Bed is a Raft… Drunk With Love, Eating Naked,
Naked to the Waist, Talking in the Dark, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love:, The Varieties of Romantic Experience, A Multitude of Sins, Troublemakers, and Other Saints; All My Relations, The Fun Parts,
The Usual Mistakes, The Nature of Longing, Men Giving Money,
Women Yelling, Too Much Happiness.
The News from Spain
I Cannot Tell I Lie, Exactly: We’re in Trouble; Female Trouble. If I Loved You I Would Tell You This, Half in Love, The Half You Don’t Know, Things You Should Know You Never Know: This Is Not the Tropics; A Bad Man is Easy to Find; You Have the Wrong Man; A Good Man is Hard to Find.
I Am No One You Know
Have You Seen Me? The Roaring Girl, The Blue Woman, The Interpreter of Maladies, Passion and Affect? This is How You Lose Her, The Love of a Good Woman, Where Love Leaves Us, What She Left Me, How It Ended; Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned —Do The Windows Open?—
The Lowest Blue Flame Before Nothing. Oblivion.
Don’t Cry
Some Possible Solutions: Getting a Life, Reasons to Live…. Pray for Yourself. Tumble Home. Darling? Thank You for the Music. Thank You for Being Concerned and Sensitive. Sorry I Worried You. I Will Always Love You.
This is a Voice from Your Past. Aren’t You Happy for Me?
The End… of Free Love.
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Julie Benesh’s work has been published in Tin House Magazine, Bestial Noise: A Tin House Fiction Reader, Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, and Gulf Stream, among others, and she is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Grant. She received an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College, lives in Chicago with two cats and a lot of books, and works as a professor of organizational leadership and management consultant. In her spare time she is polishing her first story collection, Habits of Happiness and Other Conundra.
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