More praise for EVERY KISS A WAR

In the stories that make up Every Kiss a War, Leesa Cross-Smith deftly finds love in the sadness and light in the sorrow. These stories will burrow their way into your heart and head, taking their rightful place beside the love songs you’ve had on repeat for years.

—TROY PALMER, editor of Little Fiction

Leesa Cross-Smith is a sorceress. Out of pop songs and humid Kentucky nights, out of big belt buckles and back-road drives, Cross-Smith conjures stories filled with sentences that dazzle and characters who yearn with their whole broken hearts. Every Kiss a War is a remarkable debut collection by a writer whose words I’d follow down any starlit gravel road.

—CHAD SIMPSON, author of Tell Everyone I Said Hi

Leesa Cross-Smith’s Every Kiss A War is an emotional battlefield, a perfectly written anatomy of the human condition—the good, the bad, the quiet moments that define our relationships—that you can’t help but pick yourself out in the pages, can’t help but be pulled into her sumptuous writing, her words becoming your favorite quilt to cover you from the cold.”

—ROBERT JAMES RUSSELL, author of Sea of Trees

Leesa Cross-Smith’s stories are some of the most intimate I’ve ever read. Her words delve not only into the minds of her characters, but into their deepest, most specific wounds. These are tales of strength despite fragility, of beauty despite darkness, of laughter despite immense hurt. I truly can’t wait for the world to fall in love with these characters, as I have. Mark my words: Leesa Cross-Smith is a writer to watch.

—SARAH LYNN KNOWLES, founder of Storychord.com