Tea Leaves

“Budenz writes with an aesthetic and energy that jump off the page, narrating these stories with great care and curiosity. It's funny, it's queer, and it's full of life.”

—M.M. Carrigan, Editor-in-Chief, Taco Bell Quarterly

“The stories of Tea Leaves flit expertly between the numinous and the mundane. This collection by Jacob Budenz is both a charm against the banal and a come-hither to the hidden forces of the universe.”

—dave ring, author and Shirley Jackson Award-winning editor of Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness 

“These stories are fabulous, in every sense: beautifully queer fables set in a familiar world of food trucks and AirBnBs, but with just enough magic to set it all askew and show us the wonderful absurdity of the mundane—and the abiding miracle of love even amidst the uncertainty of our minds and the frailties of our ever-aging bodies. Budenz’s prose is quick and sharp, full of charms that whisk us into the darkest forests of the human condition. In Tea Leaves, we experience the fearsome joy of inhabiting the world in other bodies.”

— Baynard Woods, author of Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness

“You’re twenty-six seconds early, and you’ve found the right place. If anyone can kindle an unlikely spark into a lesbian food truck power couple and heckle bachelor party alligators to the surface, it’s Jacob Budenz. Tea Leaves wistfully transports us to a funny, improbable, end-of-the-road world. Come for the fairies; stay for the gay dimensional magic.”

—Tucker Lieberman, author of Most Famous Short Film of All Time