Dazzling stories from a prizewinning new author whose writing “packs a powerful punch, combining the brilliance of T.C. Boyle and the icy clarity of Margaret Atwood” (Tucson Weekly).

An apprentice dominatrix suddenly loses her grip (“Rubber Days”), a spurned wife tries to explain her husband’s flaws to his mother (“Russian Lover”), a stripper turns the tables on jeering customers (“Why I Got Fired”) . . . Jana Martin’s smart, vulnerable heroines respond to life’s curveballs with guts and flair. In luminous prose she deftly plumbs the depths of their troubles—and shows the often startling ways they dig themselves out.

Jana Martin’s sentences have beauty and bite and a rhythm all their own. These are tough, funny stories from a writer wise enough to know that wisdom doesn’t always come with experience. Russian Lover won’t teach you much about Russia, but it will give you some exhilaratingly painful portraits of people trying to love.--Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land

There’s an elegant, flaring strength to Russian Lover, a precision of language that is daring and unique in the way it touches memory. Martin’s stories are cocoons spun tightly around an elusive, idiopathic emotional core—always intriguing, they give life to the tired mind. --Lydia Millet, author of My Happy Life

Jana Martin received an MFA from the University of Arizona. Her story “Hope” won a Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers. Her stories and nonfiction have appeared in Five Points, Spork, Yeti, the Village Voice, Cosmopolitan, and Willow Springs. She is a contributor to sporkpress.com, which hosts her regular fiction column, is mink hollow. Jana lives in Woodstock, New York.

This is the debut title from the new YETI imprint, a collaboration between Yeti magazine and Verse Chorus Press.