Burlesque Press is extremely proud to be publishing Tawnysha Greene’s debut novel, A House Made of Stars.
In this story, a young girl, ten years old and hard-of-hearing, attempts to cope with her family’s descent into poverty and desperation. She takes care of her deaf sister as her parents move them from place to place. She is a sensitive child, able to view the outside world with profound precision and care — even though she is mystified by the actions of the troubled and self-destructive adults around her. She slowly comes to understand the real source of the family’s sufferings, leading her on a harrowing journey of escape.
We love this book and think you will as well. It somehow manages to be both a quick, easy read and a harrowing (at times terrifying) experience.
In the process of writing the novel, Tawnysha Greene sent out chapters and excerpts to literary magazines, seeing if the work would resonate with editors.
It turned out that almost everyone was a fan. She ultimately released selections from her work-in-progress with Weave Magazine, storySouth, Blue Lake Review, JMWW, PANK Magazine, Hobart, Bartleby Snopes, A-Minor, Monkeybicycle, Waccamaw, Barely South Review, Raleigh Review, decomP, elimae, Dogzplot, Bellingham Review, Emprise Review, The Citron Review, Annalemma, Bluestem Magazine, Used Furniture Review, Necessary Fiction, Staccato Fiction, 52/250 A Year of Flash, Eunoia Review, 2River View, Wigleaf, Rougarou: An Online Journal, Still: The Journal, and Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts.
It is not the kind of work that editors wanted to turn down.
You can read the first chapter here, at A-Minor magazine: The Game.
Moira Crone, the author of The Not Yet and The Ice Garden, says that:
Tawnysha Greene’s A House Made of Stars is hard to put down or to forget. The novelist remains so close to the immediate experience of the narrator—a perceptive and endangered child—that the reader sees the world through her in every sense of the word, and is terrified… A gripping, gorgeous read.
Margaret Lazarus Dean, author of Leaving Orbit and The Time It Takes to Fall, writes:
The characters in Tawnysha Greene’s gorgeous debut are children who can show us the world with startling and heartbreaking clarity. They see the beauty in scraps of ugliness and sense the danger in every tranquil domestic scene. In a novel that belies the familiar tropes of coming-of-age, child narrator, and survival narrative, Greene offers us something that transcends all three.
A House Made of Stars is available for pre-order now, and will soon be available on Amazon (paperback and kindle).
Now you should visit Tawnysha Greene’s website!
Plus you should also come to The Hands On Literary Festival in New Orleans, where she will read from the novel and answer questions from readers.
Burlesque Press 