The Cypress & Pine Fiction Series - 2017 Selection

Praise for Understand Me, Sugar

Funny and tragic and leavened by faith, Understand Me, Sugar wages for hope. Blunschi has crafted a rich cast of characters who bide and break in the name of transformation, “grazing the dark interior” to expose (if not detangle) the messy threads of desire and suffering. You will want to experience this well-written collection of stories more than once, to return and linger with its difficult questions about self-discovery and the things that prevent us from feeling connected across the joys and disasters of living. 
—Geffrey Davis, author of Revising the Storm

Understand Me, Sugar invites the reader to follow some very appealing characters over some very dubious moral terrain. We might be appalled by their choices, even more by how we identify with them, and still further by how they make us laugh. If these stories weren’t so intelligent, they would be guilty pleasures.  
—Padma Viswanathan, author of The Ever After of Ashwin Rao and The Toss of a Lemon

Jane Blunschi doesn’t flinch in her storytelling, and the result is a collection of searingly honest tales that lay bare a full-throated humanity. Her characters are smart, funny, and gut-wrenchingly familiar. As Blunschi’s voice slips under the skin of these people, and flows in their bloodstreams, the reader can’t help but think, this could be me. 
—Lucy Jane Bledsoe, author of A Thin Bright Line and The Big Bang Symphony

Jane Blunschi is one of the sassiest writers I know. She goes deep, she goes dark, she goes wicked, sly, cut-your-eyes-sideways funny. With wit and insight, Blunschi evokes contemporary women, their lives, relationships, and concerns, with as keen an edge as any writer working today. Understand Me, Sugar is a pure, unadulterated delight.
—Rilla Askew, author of Kind of Kin