Selected online short fiction: Affirmation - Wigleaf Cornelia Ann - Atticus Review Girls Town - SmokeLong Quarterly Heaven for Everyone - Storyglossia Michelle - Barren Magazine MILF - decomP Qi - Noble/Gas Qtrly Wet Paint - Pithead Chapel Hero Worship (Vagabondage Press) Listed in Bookriot as one of 100 Must-Read Lesbian and Bisexual Books, Hero Worship is collection of linked stories about the search for love as a 20-something lesbian. As a child Valerie longs for a hero like her favorite TV character Xena Warrior Princess; as Valerie approaches adulthood, she must grapple with a mysteriously ill mother, the discovery of a clandestine relationship between her teenage stepsister and an older man, a Christian roommate obsessed with home-makeover TV, and the looming memory of a few ex-girlfriends.  From a stint selling ice cream on a bicycle in Toronto to a visit to Dolly Parton's theme park, Valerie must figure out how to reconcile her reality with the childlike hope that someone else will save her. Hero Worship is a collection that reminds us what it means to figure out our place in the world, with those we love, and even more poignantly, without them. Order your copy here. Hymnal for Dirty Girls (Big Rodent) Rebekah Matthews’ debut collection snaps with poignant and sharp-edged stories, charged with desire and disquiet between women. Her characters evolve before our eyes, learning how to relate to each other in the strange confines of normalcy. In these six wonderful melancholies, we travel from a suburban Red Lobster to a Baltimore sex stakeout, from brief earthly heavens and to a very literal Hell. The characters grapple with loss, survival, and faith as they try to navigate the complicated ins and outs of the everyday world. In “Reasonably In-Shape Women,” a young woman attends a fashion blogger's backyard barbecue where she witnesses an affecting act of love, in “Worse Than,” a high school student learns the power of storytelling, and in “Heaven for Everyone” a cancer patient faces her own mortality. On every page, Matthews exposes our fears and illustrates our reactions to them as something very beautiful.