My guest this week is the woman Roxane Gay called “a consummate storyteller.” Among her many accolades, Leesa Cross-Smith has been longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize. Her latest novel, Half-Blown Rose is the Amazon Editors’ Spotlight for June 2022, the inaugural pick for Amazon’s Book Club Sarah Selects, and the Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick for June 2022.

Half-Blown Rose is the story of Vincent, a woman whose husband recently published a book uncovering secrets about his past and their marriage. She decides to escape to Paris in an effort to make sense of it all. There, she meets Loup, a charming French man 20 years her junior with whom she begins an intense affair. In the months that follow, Vincent must decide what really matters and who she’d most like to become.

In our conversation, Leesa shares how travel and the arts help shape her writing, how years are no barrier to a coming-of-age, and where her characters live after the novel ends. Then, she treats us to a reading from “Half-Blown Rose.”


http://www.leesacrosssmith.com
https://www.facebook.com/LCrossSmith/
https://www.instagram.com/leesacrosssmith/
https://twitter.com/LeesaCrossSmith


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Credits
Host and Producer: Jennifer Geraghty. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: @jennyphoria; Website: http://jennyphoria.com


Music Credits
Hip Hop Rap Instrumental (Crying Over You) by christophermorrow
https://soundcloud.com/chris-morrow-3​
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/2AHA5G9​
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/hiYs5z4xdBU​


About Us
Since well before Victor Hugo looked up at Notre Dame and thought, "Huh... what if a hunchback lived in there?" authors have been inspired by Paris. The Storytime in Paris podcast will help keep this tradition alive with short interviews and readings from your favorite contemporary authors with a French connection.
 
Every episode will feature five questions, asked by you, our authors' biggest fans, and answered live on air. Then, our authors will treat us to a reading of an excerpt from their book. Who knows? Maybe you'll even be inspired to write your own Great French Novel. Happy listening!