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Here's what people say about my work:

Crazy Love, Stories by Leslie What

coming July 2008 from Wordcraft of Oregon

"Crazy Love is crazy good! Leslie What's brain is evidently crowded with strangeness, awfulness, wonderfulness, wildness, madness of all kinds...and love. Lots of love. How lucky we are that her imagination runs deep, runs true, runs onto the page in crazily beautiful stories - and lucky, so very lucky, to be holding those stories right now in our hands."

~ Molly Gloss

"If unbearable guilt makes you wish to suffer vicariously, and professionally, for others; if you suddenly find yourself the father of thousands and thousands of children; if your ambition is to occupy the Chair of Hermit Studies at the University of Oregon, or to be a ghost in a hot-air balloon, or if you have considered wearing a gorilla mask while having an abortion - Crazy Love is your operating manual. These seventeen achingly funny and hilariously sad stories will give you invaluable advice on how to love, how to be crazy, how to be human."

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Post hoc

"Surrealism - or perhaps I should call it surreality - of one sort or another is also an element that permeates this collection. It seems sometimes to be a matter of style more than substance, seemingly mismatched images veering close to word salad (and also close to preciosity), but never quite going over the edge. More interesting are those in which the surreal quality is foundational, such as Leslie What's amazing and completely engaging "Post Hoc," in which a pregnant woman, trying to mail herself to her lover, winds up living in the post office.

~ Robert M. Tilendis, Rambles.net

The Sweet and Sour Tongue

"Her ingenious whimsey takes her tales to a whole other level of sublime metaphor and surreality."

~ Publisher's Weekly

Olympic Games

"This is a wonderful novel; it may well become a cult classic."

~ Elizabeth Hand

"This very funny fantasy is especially impressive in the way it turns serious and genuinely moving in its final pages."

~ Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle

Why I Wash the Dead

"A powerful, lean, direct, taut, sinewy, substantive, holy, prayerful piece of work that matters."

~ Brian Doyle

Other Stuff

"Over the past few years I have been watching Leslie What blossom from a nice little comic talent into a great big scary comic talent."

~ Damon Knight

"Leslie What's stories have the power to strike an emotional chord in me, and whether that chord summons tears or laughter it is deeply satisfying."

~ Kate Wilhelm

"Leslie What's Things the Mirror Sees does what speculative fiction ought to do; it provides us with a wonderful piece of alien viewpoint. The true and best piece of speculative fiction is changing the nature or perception by giving us something new or truly marvelous to consider."

~ Don Webb

"What do you mean you don't like tongue? You loved tongue. You used to eat it all up. Don't tell stories."

~ Leslie's Mom

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A normal family out for a walk.
Mask by Leslie What, Knitting by Leslie's mom.

First came love, then came marriage, then two babies, a mini-van, and lots of stories.

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Updated April 2008 Website gltiches? Please tell the site genie.
Contents copyright 2002-2008 by Leslie What. All rights reserved, but you can ask.