From the University Press of Kentucky, February 2018
Featuring female narrators that range in age from five to forty, the narratives in Make Way for Her speak to the many challenges and often bittersweet rewards of offering, receiving, and returning love as imperfect human beings. The stories are united by the theme of desperate love, whether it’s a daughter’s love for a parent, a sister’s for a sibling, or a romantic love that is sometimes returned and sometimes unrequited. Cortese’s complex and multilayered stories play with the reader’s own desires and anticipations as her characters stubbornly resist the expected. The intrepid girls and women in this book are, above all, explorers. They drive classic cars from Maine to Phoenix, board airplanes for the first time, and hike dense forests in search of adventure; but what they often find is that the most treacherous landscapes lie within. As a result, Make Way for Her explores a world of women who crave knowledge and experience, not simply sex or love.
To purchase (or to offer a review), visit Amazon.com or the University Press of Kentucky.
Reviews of Make Way for Her and Other Stories:
July, 2018: I’m honored to have this kind review in the most recent issue of Review of Texas Books. You can read the whole thing here, but here’s a taste: “Cortese’s collection is sometimes hopeful, sometimes heartbreaking, and always authentic. She manages to create a world we have all been to, characters who are pieces of people we have known, and plots that travel to places we have stood in. This beautiful collection is for any woman who desires a trip back to times past and for any girl who wants a roadmap to see what lies ahead.” Many thanks!
January, 2018: I’m thrilled to see this conclusion about the book in Kirkus: “These portraits are a welcome addition to the burgeoning canon of finely wrought female stories.” Read the full review here!
January, 2018: The full review is located here, but I here’s a snippet of Foreword‘s take on the stories: “Katie Cortese’s Make Way for Her and Other Stories offers enticing glimpses of curiously compact, womencentric fictional universes, generally focused on girls, teenagers, women, and the men who affect—but not necessarily impact—their lives. […] Cortese’s writing is smoothly compelling and adapts from voice to voice.” Thanks for the close read and kind words!
More Praise for Make Way for Her and Other Stories:
“Heartening, and unusually thoughtful, this collection of stories places the young women, their feelings and minds (not just their bodies) at the center. In that way, it seems more true to what adolescence in young women can be: full of mistaken attachments, questioning actions, and, sometimes, provocative men who may be a wrong choice, may appear to represent freedom that, in fact, will be due to the young woman’s own agency and growth.”―Crystal Wilkinson, recipient of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence for The Birds of Opulence
“Some of the many foolhardy, vulnerable and brave ways innocence insists upon bittersweet experience are superbly portrayed in Katie Cortese’s Make Way For Her and Other Stories. With sensuous prose, achingly authentic characters and precise narrative skill, Cortese enthralls and stuns, page after page, story upon story. A magnificent, heartbreaking collection.”―Melissa Pritchard, author of A Solmen Pleasure and Palmerino
“This collection is not about understanding our young people. It’s about living and breathing inside their bodies and heads. Salinger can step aside now. Make way for Katie Cortese!”―Dennis Covington, author of Salvation on Sand Mountain