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How to Wrestle a Girl

9780374602802 fc
Paperback, MCD × FSGO, 2021
Blackburn  venita by virginia barnes

Venita Blackburn

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A Paris Review Staff Pick and an Amazon Editors' Pick. Finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and longlisted for the 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize.

"Bold, witty, ominous and vulnerable . . . How to Wrestle a Girl shines in its propensity to magnify small moments, challenge our presumptions and dissect the beauty, danger and wonder of girlhood." --The New York Times Book Review


Hilarious, tough, and tender stories from a farseeing star on the rise


Venita Blackburn’s characters bully and suffer, spit and tease, mope and blame. They’re hyperaware of their bodies and fiercely observant, fending off the failures and advances of adults with indifferent ease. In “Biology Class,” they torment a teacher to the point of near insanity, while in “Bear Bear Harvest™,” they prepare to sell their excess fat and skin for food processing. Stark and sharp, hilarious and ominous, these pieces are scabbed, bruised, and prone to scarring.

Many of the stories, set in Southern California, follow a teenage girl in the aftermath of her beloved father’s death and capture her sister’s and mother’s encounters with men of all ages, as well as the girl’s budding attraction to her best friend, Esperanza. In and out of school, participating in wrestling and softball, attending church with her hysterically complicated family, and dominating boys in arm wrestling, she grapples with her burgeoning queerness and her emerging body, becoming wary of clarity rather than hoping for it.

A rising star, Blackburn is a trailblazing stylist, and in How to Wrestle a Girl she masterfully shakes loose a vision of girlhood that is raw, vulnerable, and never at ease.

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How to Wrestle a Girl

Venita Blackburn

Elliott Chambers

  • "How to Wrestle a Girl is a work of stunning grace and rhythm. In these stories Venita Blackburn reminds us she is a writer unlike any other, her stories propelled by voice and wit and harsh beauty."

    Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black

  • "Venita Blackburn’s How to Wrestle a Girl is bold and inventive, moving between sharp realism and work that shifts the rules of form, the body, or the physical world, finding new ways to tell the stories of how girls are taught to be girls. Blackburn has the talent to put words to the things we thought existed just outside of language, but she also has the wise restraint to bring us just close enough to look directly at the things there aren’t words for and leave them unsaid."

    Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections

  • "[Blackburn] vividly renders the vulnerability of girlhood on the margins, revealing the aches of that time in one's life when everything feels at once carefree and world-ending. The 30 stories here appear on the page like snapshots from an off-color Polaroid—dazzling and disorienting." --Michelle Hart, Oprah Daily"Blackburn, a prolific, stylish short-story writer in great command of her medium, dexterously revels in the humor and horror of coming of age whilst weary of the ways of the world."

    Jordan Taliha McDonald, Vulture
  • "[Blackburn] vividly renders the vulnerability of girlhood on the margins, revealing the aches of that time in one's life when everything feels at once carefree and world-ending. The 30 stories here appear on the page like snapshots from an off-color Polaroid—dazzling and disorienting." --Michelle Hart, Oprah Daily

    Michelle Hart, Oprah Daily

  • "A bold, witty, ominous and vulnerable second book of stories that is as resolute and original as its author . . . With detailed imagery, keen observation and an ability to subvert expectations, Blackburn commands the page in few words . . . How to Wrestle a Girl shines in its propensity to magnify small moments, challenge our presumptions and dissect the beauty, danger and wonder of girlhood." --Jared Jackson, The New York Times Book Review"This collection of extremely short stories builds its power as it goes along; characters and themes begin to emerge in fugue-like variations. I love how Blackburn lets the rawness into her voice in a number of the stories, many of which push against gender norms and expectations of sexual desire." --Lauren Groff, Jezebel "[Blackburn] vividly renders the vulnerability of girlhood on the margins, revealing the aches of that time in one's life when everything feels at once carefree and world-ending. The 30 stories here appear on the page like snapshots from an off-color Polaroid—dazzling and disorienting." --Michelle Hart, Oprah Daily"Blackburn, a prolific, stylish short-story writer in great command of her medium, dexterously revels in the humor and horror of coming of age whilst weary of the ways of the world."

    Jordan Taliha McDonald, Vulture"Blackburn’s voice is so nimble, toggling cooly between narrators and forms; she is a writer obviously in control of her craft and playing with its limitations. Blackburn can also be quietly vicious, breaking your heart with such a clean blade of controlled style that you don’t realize it’s happened until you’ve reached the end." --Lauren Kane, The Paris Review (staff pick)"The kids at the heart of Venita Blackburn’s new short story collection aren’t just mere mean girls
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