Shuly Xóchitl Cawood

Shuly Xóchitl Cawood is the author of several books, including the poetry collection Trouble Can Be So Beautiful at the Beginning, winner of the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry, and the flash essay collection What the Fortune Teller Would Have Said, winner of the Iron Horse Literary Review Prose Chapbook Contest. Originally from Ohio, Shuly currently lives in East Tennessee. She has an MFA in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte, and she loves leading writing workshops, hiking in the woods, and eating dark chocolate. Learn more about her at shulycawood.com

Shuly also leads writing workshops through Press 53’s High Road Fest Online, including the popular Let’s Write Together!, a one-hour lunchtime workshop at Noon Eastern on most Tuesdays. Learn more at Press53.com/online

Praise for Something So Good It Can Never Be Enough

Immersing yourself in the work, you’ll discover stories rich in warmth and humor, as well as pain and regret. Some of the best are in the voice of a mature and sage (sadder but wiser) woman looking back at the missteps of her younger self, especially in love. . . . In addition to poignant narratives, this collection includes dry humor and the satisfaction of deep metaphor. . . . Revelations arise from well-observed details in these poems…”

—Jeanne Julian, Main Street Rag

In Something So Good It Can Never Be Enough, we see denial and indulgence—all the things we withhold: love, food, companionship, desire, hope—and what happens when we allow ourselves these things. “I defined myself for years by how I followed rules, / . . . denied for so long all the ways my body / wanted to devour and be devoured.” When permitting herself things long-denied, Cawood acknowledges she doesn’t always get it right: “. . . I was the party maker, the vandal, the stumbling / stupid person with her hand raised in the air, ready to fling, / willing to break anything while longing for nothing / but love.” And how many of us have been there—ready to break, ready for love? As I read through this collection, I was struck by how Cawood notices the smallest of things and reminds us to find joy, how she shows us that “The magic was always / in the miracle / of one more day.” Cawood tells us how she “eat[s] the bars, not even slowly, // and with no apology.” and this is how I consumed this collection—greedy for every word she laid on the page, every image she painted, every morsel she doled out.

—Courtney LeBlanc, author of Her Whole Bright Life, winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize

Shuly Xóchitl Cawood’s personal and human poems lift us into a world where the past—no matter its complexities or tragedies—can be understood and transformed. Watching her learn compassion for who she used to be helps me rethink my younger self. This poet’s gift is for transformation toward joy. Here she meditates on time (“Rising takes the kind of time you give knowing // you won’t get it back”) and hope (“Luck is almost the same / thing as hope”), and want—the book, so much like so many of us, is want-haunted. 

We read poetry to do the impossible, to live inside another human mind. “I want to tell you a story. // A story with no shame,” Cawood writes. Yes; let her tell you about her mother who doesn’t believe she can cook or about best friends and good friends, holiday parties and soft-boiled eggs and buttermilk rolls. Learn “Yes is everywhere— / like fireflies and silver-sided leaves and dogs that chase the rain.” I’m so glad this book exists. Shuly Xóchitl Cawood has a talent for narrative as well as whimsy, for nonce forms—she’s a master of refrain and of riff— and I came away from these poems not only pleased, but happier for having read Something So Good It Can Never Be Enough.                                  

—Laura Lee Washburn, author of The Book of Stolen Images  

Shuly Xóchitl Cawood’s powerful storytelling is alive and vibrant throughout this stunning new poetry collection, Something So Good It Can Never Be Enough. Her signature themes run throughout, including: the journey through, to, and from desire and relationships; deep abiding love for family and food; hunger; and the things that nourish and torment us. You can’t read this collection without traveling through a life lived with brilliant and startling observations—the natural world, our beloved pets and other friends, marriages, loss, joy, and yearning are all on full display in this potent work. There is a cinematic, vibrant, and redeeming quality to this collection. I could not help but feel a sense of revelation and completion but also desire for more of this poet when I hit the last page.

—Carla Rachel Sameth, author of Secondary Inspections

About A Small Thing to Want

A Small Thing to Want, the debut short story collection by Shuly Xóchitl Cawood, chronicles the choices people make about whom to love and whom to let go, their yearnings that either bind them or set them free, and the surprising ways love shows up, without reason or restraint. The characters in these stories long for freedom, truth, friendship, courage, and second chances, but each person will have to grapple with the consequences and costs of their desires.

Praise for A Small Thing to Want

The most exceptional short story collection I have read in quite some time.

—Dayton Daily News

Beautifully crafted and dig deep into the realities of family life.

—BuzzFeed News

A Small Thing to Want honors the intimate encounters and decisions that can propel our lives in unexpected directions. Cawood brings subtlety and compassion to such private moments, shining a light on their resonating power . . . . By mining the nuances of her characters’ everyday lives, Cawood creates her collection’s true strength—narrating the crossroads moments in which people choose tenderness when bitterness or cruelty might be easier.

—Chapter 16, Humanities Tennessee

Shuly Cawood’s debut is one to be celebrated. In these smart, keenly observed, pitch-perfect stories, Cawood tunes in to the nuances of grief and love — what was and what might have been— understanding that it’s often the small tragedies that mark our lives in the most profound ways, and she does so with wisdom, humor and great tenderness.

—Elissa Schappell, author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls

These are stories so good you won't want them to end, but when they do, filled with rich characters and wonderful technical gambits, they always satisfy and resonate.  An excellent collection.

—Fred Leebron, author of In the Middle of All This

Shuly Cawood has been watching us. In her story collection, A Small Thing to Want, she performs dazzling pirouettes around questions many of us avoid: what is in our hearts? Why are we concealing what we are really feeling? How do we heal holes in our souls? Is it possible to mend shattered parts of broken hearts? Each story shines an inquisitive beam of light into another darkened chamber. She understands our wants and our aspirations. Her exquisite renderings of complicated relationships will leave readers breathlessly yearning for more.

—Vick Mickunas, Book Reviewer, The Dayton Daily News

Despite the book’s title, the desires of the characters in Shuly Cawood’s collection, A Small Thing to Want, are anything but small. These twelve stories are grounded in domestic detail, but in the vein of Anne Tyler or Elizabeth Strout, each gesture reveals a world of longing: for self-knowledge, for connection, for clarity. At times sad, often wryly funny, always deeply empathetic, Cawood’s prose elevates her subjects beyond their everyday circumstances.

—Kate Geiselman, editor of Flights literary magazine

Shuly Cawood’s stories are inhabited by lovely and loving characters, people who wander the maze of human relationships, sometimes finding their way, often getting sidetracked, always living to search for love another day. A sure and beautiful writing style tells us there is more boiling beneath the surface than we will ever know.

—Barry Kitterman, editor of Zone 3

Shuly Cawood’s writing style is clean, fresh, as she explores the messiness of relationships. Compelling stories deliver characters in crisis, certain to engage readers in each unpredictable outcome. High praise for this strong, clever collection.

—Evan Williams, author of Ripples

Shuly X. Cawood’s debut fiction collection A Small Thing to Want churns with lives that crave and covet, forming an undercurrent of desire. Throughout these skillfully crafted stories of missed opportunities and hidden transgressions, Cawood leans into what is vital.

—Jon Pineda, author of Let’s No One Get Hurt