A Cold Glass of Milk

by Nathan Leslie

Hailed as "original, inventive, and rich in tales that amuse, delight, and move" and "a collection that gets under the skin quickly," A Cold Glass of Milk, by Nathan Leslie, is published by Uccelli Press of Seattle, WA. The stories included in Nathan Leslie’s A Cold Glass of Milk originate from a variety of richly individuated characters, including pretentious ballet teachers, children whose best friend is a tree, goat tenders, taco makers, tacky art salesmen, mushroom hunters, and nudie car models. We witness the construction, destruction, and reconstruction of various family units. Each speaker invites us into their experiences as honestly as they know how, inviting the reader to relive with them the details of their life, as if verbalization was their last hope to make order out of the seemingly senseless plethora of details that make up their (and our) collective experience. The stories coalesce around such unifying motifs as the issue of how we learn to define ourselves in modern American culture by what we buy, what we do for a living, who we sleep with, what we want or don’t want. Readers will find themselves forced to redefine their definition of "normality." The speakers in Leslie’s stories do what all good characters are supposed They take us out of our familiar world, show us something new, and then, as we are leaving, we turn for one quick look back and recognize ourselves in the losers who want so desperately to win, losers who don’t know they’re losers, losers who can’t afford to lose one more thing.

384 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

Nathan Leslie’s ten books of short fiction include Sibs, Three Men and Root and Shoot. He is also the author of Night Sweat, a poetry collection. His first novel, The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice, was published by Atticus Books in 2012. His short stories, essays and poems have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines including Boulevard, Shenandoah, North American Review, South Dakota Review, and Cimarron Review. He was series editor for The Best of the Web anthology 2008 and 2009 (Dzanc Books) and edited fiction for Pedestal Magazine for many years. He writes a regular music column for Atticus Review and was interviews editor for Prick of the Spindle. He is also the host of Reston Readings--a monthly reading series featuring three authors/month. Check him out at nathanleslie.com, on Facebook and Twitter.