Victoria Young

Love Poems for Butchers Victoria Young

True stories about sex, dating, and fatphobia

Victoria Young (known as @VictoriaNachos on Instagram) is a woman on a journey to see if you can be fat, hetero, and sexually satisfied in a world controlled by men. In this intimate and searing debut collection of short stories, Victoria addresses the cruelty, injustice, and indignity of being not only a sexual woman but a sexual woman in a fat body. A woman who describes herself as a "goddamn delight," Victoria maintains a "grasp of tone that is hard to achieve: self-deprecating without being self-pitying, a style that lets the reader understand the author can step out of the experience and observe [her] own life with a kind of clarity." (Russell Wangersky, PRISM magazine). With bracing candor, vulnerability, and a keen self-awareness, the stories in this collection explore some of the author's most demoralizing dating and sexual experiences for our enjoyment and enlightenment, repeatedly coming to terms with the reasons she suffers fools. But it's not all doom and gloom when it comes to dating in Victoria's world-Love Poems for Butchers shows us that there is lust and laughter and generally enough joys to sustain the lulls. Victoria's stories have previously appeared in PRISM magazine, Cream City Review, The Province Newspaper, and Thought Catalog.