Emily Marcus' GODDESSES pulses with mythic resonance while exploring themes of power, desire, agency, and transformation. The divine and the present-day collide in ways that are unexpected, unsettling, and deeply human. A dazzling debut. -Vanessa Hua, Forbidden City In Emily Marcus' Goddess, we find our heroines at high school reunions and the sacking of ancient cities, holy temples and lazy summer afternoons, as they wrestle with ambition, friendship, ritual, motherhood, love, and betrayal. There is horror in these pages, as well as humor and compassion, as Marcus explores the enduring power of myths to illuminate and inform the stories we tell about ourselves, constraining and expanding the lives we thought possible. In stories that unspool across the pastoral and nightmarish, we witness girls and women on the cusp of transformation, faced with impossible decisions of unimaginable consequence, then we have the pleasure of watching as they leap. -Nora Corrigan, Grub Street Emily Marcus Gong is a writer and educator located in Boston, MA. She earned her BA in Classical Studies from The George Washington University and is a 2021 graduate of UMass Amherst's MFA for Poets & Writers with a focus on fiction. Her freelance lifestyle and travel writing can be found in numerous regional and national publications including Connect Corporate Magazine, World Bride Magazine, kimkim.com, Hey Alma, and New England Living, among others. Her poetry and short fiction appears in Eunoia Review, Red Noise Collective, Right Hand Pointing, and the Australian Writers' Centre. Emily currently serves as an Academic Advisor and PT Writing Lecturer at Northeastern University. Find her at emilymarcusgong.com.