A modern-day tale of Greek mythological folly, this story follows the spoiled and vain Hera, who yearns for a family at any cost, as she pursues macho Zeus, still on the prowl in the 21st century. Meanwhile, Zeus, having given a family some cursory effort, is attempting to find himself in wine, women of all descriptions, and male rituals engaged in by his very own new age cult. Blind passion is truly a disaster when it involves the gods, leading to broken hearts, shattered dreams, and entomologically enhanced offspring. It is left to an unlikely band of mortals and one determined water nymph to somehow rein in the Olympian chaos.
Leslie What is an Oregon writer, writing teacher, and caregiver. She received a Nebula Award for short story and is the author of the story collection Crazy Love (Wordcraft of Oregon), a finalist for the 2009 Oregon Book Award for fiction. Her writing has been published in numerous anthologies, including Witpunk, Bending the Landscape, Logorrhea, Interfictions, The Mammoth book of Tales from the Road, and in numerous journals, including Lilith, Calyx, The Clackamas Review, Asimov's, Parabola, Midstream, Utne Reader, and True Love.
"Crazy Love" received PW and Booklist starred reviews, and was listed by Booklist as one of the Top Ten SF Books of 2008. The story collection also won a gold medal in the Next Generation Indie Awards.
She sits the on the Board of Directions for The Clarion Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that is the fundraising arm for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop at UC San Diego, the longest-running Workshop of its kind.
She admires transgressive characters in literature and admits to feeling wrongful pride that her Parson Russel Terrier was banished from doggy daycare for tyrannizing the bigger dogs.
