Eight works featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes

McKenzie Watson-Fore is a writer, artist, and neighbor currently based in her hometown of Boulder, Colorado. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction from Pacific University. She writes about evangelicalism, relationships to people and place, and self-discovery. Watson-Fore serves as the executive editor for sneaker wave magazine and is the founder and host of the Thunderdome Conference. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best American Essays.

At Electric Lit Watson-Fore tagged eight works featuring cathartic bathhouse scenes, including:

Splinters by Leslie Jamison

A spa visit is ideal fodder for Jamison: a bespoke, sensory setting that gradually recedes into background to allow for dialogue or interior reflection. In this case, Jamison and her friend Anna spend an evening at the Russian and Turkish Baths on Tenth Street. Jamison’s descriptions are lush and steamy, much more florid than either Zauner’s or Koh’s. The presence of others in the bathhouse is a fact Jamison uses to console herself against her personal disappointments and deprivations, and she gestures toward the communal nature of these spaces and the sense of shared humanity they open up. As elsewhere in Splinters, Jamison is straining for transcendence, and she asserts it via her projections onto and vivid descriptions of others.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Splinters is among Nathalie Atkinson's eight new books about sex, relationships and romance.

--Marshal Zeringue