“Charley looked like someone from a Greek play, Electra, or Cassandra. She looked like someone had just set her favorite city on fire.”
— from “The Hortlak” by Kelly Link
Zombies at the convenience store. An apocalyptic beauty pageant. Tap-dancing bank robbers and self-aware television characters who turn out to be real.
The worlds of Kelly Link are quirky, smart and frequently haunted.
In her three critically acclaimed story collections—Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners and Pretty Monsters—Link balances the trappings of horror, fantasy and science fiction with a gift for experimentation and prose that pings from absurdist humor to sardonic nonchalance to dreamlike states and emotional realism of equally unbearable intensity.
At 8 p.m. Thursday, March 21, Link, the Visiting Hurst Professor of Creative Writing, will read from her work for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.
In addition, Link will present a talk on the craft of fiction at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 28.
Both events—presented as part of The Writing Program’s spring Reading Series—are free and open to the public and take place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall. A reception and book signing will immediately follow the reading.
For more information, call (314) 935-7428.
“Pity the poor librarians who have to slap a sticker on Kelly Link’s genre-bending, mind-blowing masterpiece of the imagination, Stranger Things Happen,” said author Karen Russell for NPR’s You Must Read This. “Are these stories horror or fantasy? Science-fictional romances? Travelogues to nonexistent countries: a nightmarish North America and a very weird New Zealand?
“This is a book that would probably cause the old wooden card catalog to catch fire.”
Born in Miami, Link once won a free trip around the world by answering the question “Why do you want to go around the world?” (“Because you can’t go through it.”) Her stories have won three Nebulas, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award.
With her husband, Gavin J. Grant, Link is founder of Small Beer Press and the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. With Grant and Ellen Datlow she edits The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (St. Martin’s Press). She also edited the anthology Trampoline.