Jody Seay

Writer Jody Seay has been described as "All Texas drawl and desert-dry wit . . . a woman who could make a bunion belly-laugh or a stone weep." Her work has been published in Dallas Life, Massage, and The Justin Wheeler; her novel, The Second Coming of Curly Red (which has been described as The Liar's Club meets Fried Green Tomatoes), will be released by Firebrand Books in September of 1999. She is currently working on Dead in a Ditch, a collection of humorous essays about growing up in Texas and all the ways her mother thought she might die. Jody is a certified rolfer, a native Texan, and a cattle rancher's granddaughter. She was a record breaking Junior Bowler in 1963, and – when she was still drinking – she won a drinking, spitting, and cussing contest in Central City, Colorado.

The following is an excerpt from her essay, Lunar Love.
Do you ever feel as if the moon belongs to you? I do. Maybe not to me, personally, but more like to all of us. Yeah, the moon belongs to all of us, especially when it's doing something snazzy like an eclipse or slashing a smile at us across the night sky.
    On warm summer nights in Texas when I was a kid, the sky was so big and clear we could see the stardust. My mom would spread quilts in the backyard, and we'd lie on our backs, Mother and her pajama-clad crew, staring up at the stars, making up stories about the moon. We'd ask a million questions.
    "Why is it called the Milky Way?"
    "What makes the stars?"
    "Are there people lying in their backyards on the stars looking at us?"