Thirty-Nine transgressive short stories
that are raw, relatable, and fearlessly honest.
Welcome to this nostalgic museum of girlhood, where eleven self-loathing and self-destructive girls are on display. Watch as feelings of confusion, rebellion, and a desire to belong turn them into defiant women, unruly mothers, and unsavory wives. Roman leaves prison with a dangerous man; Kia attends a locker room sermon on period sex; Carly escorts her boyfriend’s ex to the abortion clinic, and you develop nudes at the local drugstore. Through sharp and visceral prose, Shannon Waite gives life to the women you know, have been, or will be in ways that break you but won’t let you look away.
 
Both a prequel and sequel to Waite’s interactive novel Raising Women, this expansion pack allows the novel’s girls to bravely tell their own gut-wrenching stories in unapologetically bold voices—and though it expands on the novel’s characters, this gritty, unsettling, and vulnerable short story collection can be read before, after, or isolated from the novel.

PRAISE
"Shannon Waite immerses us in a world of lipstick, catcalls, and blurry nudes, mining girl-and-womanhood to uncover its rough gems, cracking open their possibilities. Do we get into that man's car? Force that kiss? Finally sing karaoke? Do we ever, ever listen to our mothers? The Women is a tapestry of voices, interlocked and overlapping, that blurs lines and boundaries; it made me relieved I’m grown, but quickly reminded me of the baggage that comes with that."
—EMILY COSTA, author of Girl on Girl
 
"Shannon Waite's The Women is every middle finger Frances Farmer raised in a courtroom, every slurred "fuck you" Marilyn uttered late night into a phone, every one of us as rebellious teen girls who grew up into 'unhinged' (read: uncontrollable) women. Read it to remember who we are."
—ELIZABETH ELLEN, author of American Thighs, publisher of Hobart and SF/LD books
 
"The Women is femme theory written through the charged debris of a culture that consumes girls. In these stunning, polyvocal stories, Shannon Waite traces how girls and women are shaped by hunger and by the uneasy gift—and grift—of tenderness. These stories reveal how feminine frameworks are imposed, then ruptured—where the self is unraveled by the long, strange work of becoming luminous. With the observational heat of Lucia Berlin and the psychic acuity of Hélène Cixous, Waite composes a gutsy, feral, and necessary vision sharpened by a voice that insists on naming itself. I just loved it. It was such a pleasure to spend time in the ditches with these fierce, unforgettable characters."
—SELAH SATERSTROM, author of Slab and The Meat and Spirit Plan                   
 
"The Women is raw and gritty in all the ways that it aims to be. It’s also beautiful in its heartbreak, true in the ways its women transcend the transgressive realities they almost always face. It’s like going through your old high school yearbook that somehow made it through your basement flood. Whatever happened to her? we often wonder, pointing at the weird girl, the burnout girl, the outsider we secretly loved. Shannon Waite has all the answers to our questions. She knows the truths behind the stories of those girls. They lived, yes, sometimes just barely getting by and surviving. In Shannon Waite’s good hands, in her caring and tender ways of rendering the women that those girls grew up to be, I would say they even shine."
—PETER MARKUS, author of When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds
Girls are taxes.
Women are city limits.

You are on the precipice of womanhood and have become obsessed with an ex-convict, Roman. She introduces you to the dangerous and honest side of life that no one else has been able to. As she unapologetically places you in scandalous situations, you begin making self-destructive decisions. Depending on which decisions you choose, you may taste Roman’s blood, get branded with a searing screwdriver, or date a married man– all while each choice challenges what it means to be a woman, real, or both.

In this interactive novel, readers have twenty-four possible pathways with four unique endings to explore the wild that is growing up girl.

Raising Women is undeniably candid in how it mirrors the hoops girls jump through to bargain their place in society. Waite illuminates the desperate craving they have for belonging in a culture that is quick to cast them as pawns on a chessboard.

PRAISE

"Raising Women is a book that knows you. It knows all your secrets. It knows all the thoughts you've had. It knows what choices you've made, as well as the choices you'd change if you could go back and be a teenage girl again. It also knows that sometimes, a little self-discovery is the scariest thing of all."
   — REBECCA JONES-HOWE, author of Vile Men and Ending in Ashes

"Less a journey and more a plummet through a mad funhouse of personal discovery, risky behaviors, and strange bedfellows, to a place where the reader overturns narrative stones and returns time and again for those left unturned, and the questionable choices become their own with every turn of the page."
  — JASON M. FYLAN, author of "Engines, O-Rings, and Astronauts"
      in Burnt Tongues

"Raising Women offers insight on how to acknowledge the human being and their experience, shattering any judgements of what a "real" woman should be, look and think like."
   — LIANNA ALBRIZIO, Reedsy Discovery

"Waite builds a story with consistencies through each path."
   — COURTNEE TURNER HOYLE, Readers' Favorite (5-star review)