Though She Be But Little: Short Stories and the Fierce Women Who Write Them
The short story: the distillation of an experience, a feeling, a look, a memory—written in less than 8,000 words. This collection of authors, HALLE HILL (Good Women), JODY HOBBS HESLER (What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better), and JULIA RIDLEY SMITH (Sex Romp Gone Wrong), captures the stories of the every-person just trying to make it through the day and live with the decisions they’ve made. Though written in their own unique styles and voices, these four authors all draw from a similar well: an exploration of the human condition with all its nuanced intricacy. A young woman who works for a scam for-profit college navigates the lies she sells for a living; a man wrestles with regrets from a 30-year-old affair while his wife hovers toward death in the ICU; a woman plots to conceive a second child while at a convention hotel with her husband and teenage daughter, both of whom have other plans.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JODY HOBBS HESLER is the author of the story collection What Makes You Think You're Supposed to Feel Better and the forthcoming novel, Without You Here. Her words also appear in Necessary Fiction, Gargoyle, Valparaiso Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Writer’s Digest, Electric Literature, CRAFT, Arts & Letters, and many other journals. She teaches at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia; writes and copy edits for Virginia Wine & Country Life and Charlottesville Family Magazine; and serves as assistant fiction editor for the Los Angeles Review. LEARN MORE
HALLE HILL is the author of Good Women, which was named a 2023 Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, O Magazine, Electric Literature, Book Riot and Southwest Review. She is the winner of the 2020 Crystal Wilkinson Creative Writing Prize and the 2020 Oxford American Debut Fiction Prize. Her short stories have been translated into French and published in Joyland, New Limestone Review, Ursa Short Fiction, and The Oxford American, among others. A born and raised East Tennessean, she currently lives, works and teaches in North Carolina. LEARN MORE
JULIA RIDLEY SMITH is the author of a short story collection, Sex Romp Gone Wrong and a memoir, The Sum of Trifles. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Ecotone, Electric Literature, the New England Review, and The Southern Review, among other places. Smith’s work has been recognized as notable in Best American Essays and supported by the Sewanee Writers Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro, and other arts organizations. She teaches creative writing at UNC Chapel Hill. LEARN MORE
HOST
MOLLY SENTALL HAILE’s short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The North Carolina Literary Review, Oxford American, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She was awarded the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, is a Pushcart and O. Henry Award nominee, and her work received a notable designation in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She holds an M.F.A. in fiction from UNCG and currently teaches creative writing classes for people with cancer, survivors, and caregivers at Hirsch Wellness Network in Greensboro.