CELTICLADY'S REVIEWS: Dirty Suburbia by Sara Hosey (Jan. 2024) Guest Post and Blog Tour!

DEC Please join us for the winter 2024 blog tour for Dirty Suburbia by Sara Hosey, published by Vine Leaves Press in January 2024.

Dirty suburbias are working-class neighborhoods in which girls who are left to fend for themselves sometimes become predators, as well as affluent communities in which women discover that money is no protection against sexism, both their own and others’.
One young woman sets up her abusive, cheating boyfriend, hoping he’ll get arrested so that she can rescue him and win him back. A teenager arranges to meet up with an older man she’s met online playing video games; she brings a knife with her, just in case. A middle-aged divorcee attempts to rekindle a romantic relationship with her high school English teacher, who happens to be a former nun. A struggling academic falls in love with a Henry David Thoreau impersonator, and a well-adjusted grad student goes home for Christmas only to be repulsed by her family’s casual cruelty.
Despite the ugliness and injustice they face, as well as the failures of their families and communities, these characters often find relief in friendship and connection, and sometimes, even discover meaning and cause for hope.

Advance Praise:

“Gritty and darkly funny and ultimately humane.” -Jess Walter

“Absolutely stunning! Sara Hosey’s Dirty Suburbia contains some of the most poignant, insightful, and
entertaining stories I have read in ages.” – Kelly Fordon, author of I Have the Answer

Sara Hosey Guest Post

I Cut My Teeth Writing Genre Fiction

I learned how to write readable, forward-moving literary fiction through writing genre fiction.

My short story collection, Dirty Suburbia, is my “debut” as a literary author. Kelly Fordon describes Dirty Suburbia as “propulsive,” and Kirkus Reviews calls the stories “captivating” and “compelling.” To me, this is the highest praise: it suggests that my writing will keep you reading. And this is extra-meaningful because, sadly, I’ve not always gotten such positive feedback for my pacing. I’m aware—from reviews, readers, and, just from being honest with myself—that I have some work out there that can get a bit saggy in the middle. Work that isn’t, shall we say, quite so “propulsive.”

Still, I’ve grown as a writer over the course of developing this collection as well as each of my three ya novels, which themselves span different subgenres, including contemporary, paranormal, and mystery. And as I built those narratives, I often consulted craft books that emphasized the importance of something happening in each and every scene. If a scene does not push the plot forward, it probably shouldn’t be in the book.

I don’t necessarily think is always true for literary fiction, although some of my favorite writers, including Zadie Smith and Jonathan Franzen, are incredibly deft with pacing. But still, I personally needed to learn the importance of actually having something happen. I know this because I now find some of my earliest attempts at “literary” fiction unreadable. The work is heavy on description and ponderousness, and light on action and conflict. There are a lot of young women, thinking, maybe driving, smoking cigarettes, feeling sad. Riveting, I know.

The ghost of one of my old stories, then titled “Favorite Days,” haunts “Back to the Beach,” a story that made it into Dirty Suburbia. I’d loved a lot about “Favorite Days,” but it wasn’t very good. I remember, in my twenties, the chill that ran down my spine when my friend Jen, whose opinion I very much valued, made a withering comment about wanna-be Raymond Carvers who used simplicity to disguise a lack of substance. Yikes. I may or may not have quickly shoved a stack of stapled papers back into my knapsack and gone and smoked a cigarette to try and get a grip on my existential angst.

Although the characters and some of the concerns are similar, “Back to the Beach” is a much stronger story than “Favorite Days,” in part because I’ve come to better understand that a character’s nicotine addiction and lack of self-awareness does not equal automatic literary profundity. But perhaps more importantly, the story has stakes beyond the decision to get up off the couch or to smoke yet another cigarette. (Side note: I’ve found that depression, in general, is very hard to make interesting).

I’m proud of my young adult novels, and grateful for what writing them taught me about plot and action. And thanks to that education, I’m even prouder of the stories in Dirty Suburbia. Now, if only I could do something about this persistent existential angst.

Recommended Resources:

Save the Cat Writes a Novel,

Jessica Brody

“Fiction Writing Made Easy,”

Savannah Gilbo

Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel,

Lisa Cron

“Let’s Deconstruct a Story,”

Kelly Fordon

“The Shit No One Tells You About Writing,”

Bianca Marais, Carly Watter, and CeCe Lyra

About the Author:

Sara Hosey is the author of three young adult novels: Iphigenia Murphy, Imagining Elsewhere, and Summer People. Her short fiction been shortlisted for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize and the American Short Fiction Halifax Ranch Prize and has appeared in journals like Cordella Literary Magazine and Mudroom Magazine. She is a parent, a community college professor, and a tree enthusiast. (Photo Credit: Photo by Mike Vorrasi)

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