“Beth Gilstrap doesn’t write stories. She creates worlds. Living, breathing, meticulously crafted ecosystems we can walk and breathe in. Around every corner is someone familiar, some bleeding wound that hasn’t quite healed, some inhabitant walking through their lives independent of our gaze. These are heartbreaking worlds, but nonetheless beautiful.”
Jared Yates Sexton, author of The Man They Wanted Me To Be
“Beth Gilstrap has a honeyed tongue—she can make a story sing like no other Southern author writing today. Deadheading & Other Stories is a stunning new collection, raw-boned and aching with grace; each story within both softly envelops the reader and digs down to the marrow. I believe that this is the collection on which Gilstrap will make her name.”
Steph Post, author of Lightwood
“These stories are little gardens–the words blooming, the rain too.”
Leesa Cross-Smith, author of This Close To Okay
“Beth Gilstrap is a grand storyteller, and her lush, endearing Deadheading & Other Stories is a marvel. Steeped in despair, Gilstrap’s characters are lonely, wistful folk–who carve out necessary spaces of personhood in the tiny corners of their lives: making coffee, digging hands in the dirt, frying eggs in gobs of butter, reminiscing about days gone by. These characters are terrae incarnate–of this earth, drudged from it, molded and shaped by its rivers and valleys and the winding roads that go on and on, who, yet, are ever seeking, never quite settled. In this enchanting collection–with language and plotting so beautifully crafted, it stings–Gilstrap delivers us through darkness toward a hanging promise of hope, a glinting bit of fortune that might, yet, be within reach.”
Robert James Russell, author of Mesilla and Sea of Trees
Press, Reviews, & Media
Author Steph Post and I talk Deadheading and this writing life over at the Skylight Books Podcast. https://getpodcast.com/podcast/skylight-books-author-reading-series/skylit-beth-gilstrap-deadheading-w-steph-post_8319de2114
“TRYING TO SEE A FUTURE: TALKING WITH BETH GILSTRAP” by Kate Finegan, The Rumpus, October 4, 2021.
Interview & Reading on Booktails Podcast, December 2021
“Beth Gilstrap on Titles, Flash Fiction, and Deadheading” by Bradley Sides, Southern Review of Books
Beth Gilstrap 