Deanna Hance
Dec. 7, 2015
Science Fiction for Women
Dr. Melissa Strong
Award-Winning Author Kelly Link Author Profile
Kelly Link
is an award-winning science fiction/fantasy horror writer with many awards and
little awareness about her works. However, she should stand out amongst
readers, especially writers-to-be for how she won her awards and boosted her
writing career. As a short story writer, she founded her own publishing company
known as Small Beer Press to get her works and others like them out into the
public and eventually made a collection of nine of her short stories
collectively known as "Magic for Beginners". These short stories were
so captivating and well-written that they won her the Locus award, the Nebula
award, and the British SF award in 2006. Her experience as a writer is exactly
what writers-to-be hope for in their own writing careers, though many go through
other publishing companies rather than create their own. Her success is
inspirational to readers and writers alike, and has earned her many prestigious
awards along the way.
Kelly received her BA from Columbia and her MFA from the University of North Carolina and currently lives in Northampton publishing books through her self-founded company Small Beer Press as well as a bi-yearly "zine" (a new creative writing outlet starting to gain popularity and notoriety amongst younger audienced) known as "Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet" (smallbeerpress.com). Link states in an interview about her book "Get in Trouble", "I live in Northampton, which is a pleasant place to live, and one of the things you really notice when you live there is the way in which students come, and then they go, the town empties out ... If you live in a place with a changing population like that, you start to feel a little bit strange about the fact that you are in that place permanently" (npr.org). This feeling has inspired much of her "night time logic" as she dubs it, while striving for a sense of realism in her horror genre, her logic makes you think, "I don't understand why that made sense, but I feel there was a kind of emotional truth to it" (npr.org)." A lot of people who consider Tahlequah home can relate to this sentiment very well with all the moving traffic of college students going home for the summer, which builds an eerie ghost town feeling for residents who live here year-round.
In the collection of short stories named "Magic for Beginners", one of the most intriguing science fiction thriller stories is called "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" and gives you an eerie feeling until the very end when the horror really hits home. All of the stories are similar to the stories told in "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark", a very popular collection of short stories that hit popularity in the 1990's among young readers, however, some of Link's stories encompass more science fiction while others lean more toward fantasy, and almost all are geared toward adults with vulgar language and suggestive sexual themes. To read this collection of short horror stories online, go to http://lcrw.net/kellylink/
Kelly received her BA from Columbia and her MFA from the University of North Carolina and currently lives in Northampton publishing books through her self-founded company Small Beer Press as well as a bi-yearly "zine" (a new creative writing outlet starting to gain popularity and notoriety amongst younger audienced) known as "Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet" (smallbeerpress.com). Link states in an interview about her book "Get in Trouble", "I live in Northampton, which is a pleasant place to live, and one of the things you really notice when you live there is the way in which students come, and then they go, the town empties out ... If you live in a place with a changing population like that, you start to feel a little bit strange about the fact that you are in that place permanently" (npr.org). This feeling has inspired much of her "night time logic" as she dubs it, while striving for a sense of realism in her horror genre, her logic makes you think, "I don't understand why that made sense, but I feel there was a kind of emotional truth to it" (npr.org)." A lot of people who consider Tahlequah home can relate to this sentiment very well with all the moving traffic of college students going home for the summer, which builds an eerie ghost town feeling for residents who live here year-round.
In the collection of short stories named "Magic for Beginners", one of the most intriguing science fiction thriller stories is called "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" and gives you an eerie feeling until the very end when the horror really hits home. All of the stories are similar to the stories told in "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark", a very popular collection of short stories that hit popularity in the 1990's among young readers, however, some of Link's stories encompass more science fiction while others lean more toward fantasy, and almost all are geared toward adults with vulgar language and suggestive sexual themes. To read this collection of short horror stories online, go to http://lcrw.net/kellylink/
Works Cited
"Drift
Away Into The Not Quite Dreamy Logic Of 'Get In Trouble'". Author
Interviews: NPR. NPR. 4 Feb. 2015. Web. 7 Dec. 2015.
Link,
Kelly. "Kelly Link Bio".Small Beer Press. smallbeerpress,
2002. Web. 7 Dec. 2015.
Link,
Kelly. "Magic for Beginners". lcrw. 2005. Web. 7 Dec. 2015.
Deanna Nicole Hance
I find Link interesting, because she started her own company rather than try to go through publishers. I wonder what led her to decide this was the best option for her. Was it that she was rejected, was she frustrated that she couldn’t find stories like hers on the market, or did she just see it as the best option all around? I also like the fact that Link publishes her own “zine”. I think that’s a very good plan for someone who is trying to gain attention for their company and draw authors like herself to her publishing company. Lastly, I appreciate your bringing Link’s work into perspective by relating it to the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” series. I was curious to what exactly her type of work is, but that description gives me enough information. Link sounds interesting as both an author and a publisher.
ReplyDelete-Kelby Warren