Sex Romp Gone Wrong

"Funny, mournful, and alluring, with shining moments of experimentation [...] At home on the uneasy ground between humor and solemnity, the expansive story collection Sex Romp Gone Wrong devotes concerted care and attention to the hidden lives of women and children."--Foreword Reviews"Smith's savvy debut collection captures women navigating friendships, love, and desire. [...] Smith exhibits a keen perception in her well-crafted stories."--Publishers Weekly"Sex Romp Gone Wrong is a dazzlingly inventive collection, and Julia Ridley Smith writes so beautifully about the intensity of being alive, of wanting more than you can have, of navigating the absurdity of the world with various degrees of success. You'd be hard pressed to find a writer who is so genuinely funny and yet knows the exact moment to turn that humor towards a moment of realization so deeply felt that you have to read the line again. I can't think of a better compliment for Smith's stories than the simple fact that you will want to read them over and over."--Kevin Wilson, Now Is Not the Time to Panic and Nothing to See Here"In Sex Romp Gone Wrong, Ridley creates a perfect blend of laugh-out-loud humor and profound pathos as she imagines women's lives gone wrong (and occasionally oh-so-right). The stories in the collection range from formally experimental to deftly executed realism and every one brings complex characters to life through vivid detail and endless empathy. I'm glad to be carrying these women and these worlds with me."--Gwen Kirby, Shit Cassandra Saw"Sex Romp Gone Wrong doesn't read like a debut collection; there isn't a weak story in the bunch, not a single false note. Julia Ridley Smith does a radical thing: she writes about invisible people, like middle-aged mothers, and every story is vibrantly its own thing, and every character trembles on a knife's edge between hilarity and rage. Actually, that's the book: laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreaking, and almost uncomfortably, infuriatingly wise."--Holly Goddard Jones, Antipodes and The Salt Line"Julia Ridley Smith's stories are as funny as they are wise. From a woman on a fiftieth birthday 'girls' weekend' reckoning with the personal implications of the #metoo era to a teenage girl navigating the dangers and thrills of young adulthood from the very hotel bar that's hosting her father's IT conference, these stories tackle questions of love, loss, sexuality, and the complex legacies of race and class in the modern South. Keen-eyed and tender, Smith writes characters with a generosity and humor that mark her as one of the best new voices in short fiction. Sex Romp Gone Wrong is a delight of a collection. This is the debut I've been waiting for!"--Joanna Pearson, Bright and Tender Dark

Praise for The Sum of Trifles:

"A profound and engaging meditation on personal possessions."--Suzanne Van Atten, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Recommended for anyone who has lost a parent, for lovers and wranglers of ephemera, for amateur epistemologists, and for incorrigible musers."--Kelly K. Ferguson, Indyweek

"In beautiful writing that doesn't hide from hard truths, Smith brings us a clear-eyed view of her family, herself, and the Southern culture that shaped them all."--Mary Lambeth Moore, Our State magazine