Christopher Barzak

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Christopher Barzak

Christopher Michael Barzak (born July 21, 1975 in Warren , Ohio ) is an American writer. His best-known book is the 2007 novel One for Sorrow, filmed in 2014 as Jamie Marks Is Dead .

Life

Barzak grew up in Kinsman , Ohio. He studied English and psychology at Youngstown State University , where he graduated with a bachelor's degree. He then lived in Carlsbad , California and Lansing , Michigan for a period before returning to Youngstown where he earned a Masters in English and Creative Writing . In 2004 he went to Japan, where he worked as an English teacher for two years. In 2006 he returned to Youngstown State University, where he has been a lecturer in creative writing ever since. He also teaches in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program (NEOMFA).

In 1998 Barzak took part in the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop with Barth Anderson , Alan DeNiro and Kristin Livdahl . The four formed a group of authors and published five Rabid Transit anthologies from 2002 to 2006 under the name The Ratbastards . The first volume Rabid Transit: New Fiction by the Ratbastards contained a story of each of the four group members.

A first story by Barzak, A Mad Tea Party , appeared in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet in 1999 . The short story The Other Angela was for the 2005 James Tiptree, Jr. Award nominated and the narrative The Language of Moths was for the 2007 Nebula Award nominee, won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award and appeared in the edited by Jonathan Strahan locus - Anthology Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005 .

Barzak's first novel, One for Sorrow (2007), based on the short story Dead Boy Found (2003), won the William L. Crawford Fantasy Award as a novel and was adapted as a film by Carter Smith in 2014 under the title Jamie Marks Is Dead . The novel is about a dead boy named Jamie Marks, who was barely noticed and teased at best during his lifetime, and two adolescents, Adam McCormick and Gracie Highsmith. Gracie finds Jamie's body and Adam was loved by Jamie from afar. Soon after Jamie's body is found, Adam and Gracie begin seeing Jamie's ghost, and a platonic relationship develops between Jamie and Adam.

Barzak does not see himself as a genre author who writes horror or fantasy , but compares the role of fantastic elements in his stories with the works of surrealist painters, in which the content of the unconscious becomes objective. In the same way, states of mind and inner conflicts of the protagonists are to be embodied in his works in the fantastic and thus to be concretely and better represented. Accordingly, Barzak's stories are closed to clear genre assignments and could be called slipstream , if Barzak would not rather assign himself to interstitial fiction , i.e. literature that is consciously located in the border areas between realism and fantasy . In this context he co-edited Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing with Delia Sherman in 2009 - after one of his short stories, What We Know About the Lost Families of - House , in 2007 in the first Interfictions published by Theodora Goss and Delia Sherman -Anthology had appeared. In the epilogue to Interfictions 2 , Barzak writes: "For me, interstitial is on the one hand the treatment of the fantastic as if it were real and the real as if it were strange, on the other hand a counterbalance for the tools and conventions I used for a text."

Awards

bibliography

Novels
  • The Language of Moths (short novel in: Realms of Fantasy, April 2005 )
  • One For Sorrow (2007)
  • The Love We Share Without Knowing (2008)
  • Wonders of the Invisible World (2015)
  • The Gone Away Place (2018)
Collections
  • Birds and Birthdays (2012)
  • Before and Afterlives (2013)
Short stories

1999:

  • A Mad Tea Party (in: Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, # 5, Winter 1999 )

2001:

  • Plenty (in: Strange Horizons, 28 May 2001 )

2002:

  • The Blue Egg (2002, in: Rabid Transit: New Fiction by the Ratbastards )
  • Born on the Edge of an Adjective (in: Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, # 10, June 2002 )
  • Lips (in: Say… # 1, 2002 )

2003:

  • The Drowned Mermaid (in: Realms of Fantasy, June 2003 )
  • Dead Boy Found (2003, in: Kelly Link (Ed.): Trampoline )

2004:

  • The Trail of My Father's Blood (in: Strange Horizons, 11 October 2004 )
  • Vanishing Point (in: Ideomancer, Vol. 3 Issue 9, December 2004 )
  • A Resurrection Artist (in: The Third Alternative # 39, Autumn 2004 )

2006:

  • Dead Letters (in: Realms of Fantasy, February 2006 )
  • Learning to Leave (in: Flytrap, # 5, May 2006 )
  • The Creation of Birds (2006, in: David Moles and Susan Marie Groppi (Eds.): Twenty Epics )
  • The Guardian of the Egg (2006, in: Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Eds.): Salon Fantastique: Fifteen Original Tales of Fantasy )

2007:

  • Children (in: Ideomancer, Vol. 6 Issue 1, March 2007 )
  • Safe (in: Ideomancer, Vol. 6 Issue 1, March 2007 )
  • Twenty-Three Small Disasters (in: Ideomancer, Vol. 6 Issue 1, March 2007 ; with Elad Haber, Meghan McCarron, Tim Pratt, Benjamin Rosenbaum , Kiini Ibura Salaam and Greg van Eekhout)
  • What We Know About the Lost Families of - - House (2007, in: Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss (Eds.): Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing )
  • Realer Than You (2007, in: Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Eds.): The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales )
  • Little Miss Apocalypse (in: Realms of Fantasy, August 2007 )
  • Isis in Darkness (2007, in: Steve Berman (Ed.): So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction )
  • In Between Dreams (2007, in: George Mann (Ed.): The Solaris Book of New Fantasy )
  • The Flood (in: Foundation, # 100 Summer 2007 )

2009:

  • A Thousand Tails (2009, in: Sharyn November (Ed.): Firebirds Soaring: An Anthology of Original Speculative Fiction )
  • The Ghost Hunter's Beautiful Daughter (in: Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2009 )

2010:

  • Map of Seventeen (2010, in: Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Eds.): The Beastly Bride and Other Tales of the Animal People )

2011:

  • Gap Year (2011, in: Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Eds.): Teeth: Vampire Tales )
  • Smoke City (in: Asimov's Science Fiction, April-May 2011 )
  • The 24 Hour Brother (in: Apex Magazine, December 2011 )
  • We Do Not Come in Peace ( Chronicles of the Borderlands series , 2011, in: Holly Black and Ellen Kushner (Eds.): Welcome to Bordertown )

2012:

  • Birthday (2012, in: Christopher Barzak: Birds and Birthdays )
  • Invisible Men (in: Eclipse Online, December 10, 2012 )

2013:

  • A Beginner's Guide to Survival Before, During, and After the Apocalypse (2013, in: Christopher Barzak: Before and Afterlives )
  • The Boy Who Was Born Wrapped in Barbed Wire (2013, in: Christopher Barzak: Before and Afterlives )
  • Caryatids (2013, in: Christopher Barzak: Before and Afterlives )
  • The Other Angelas (2013, in: Christopher Barzak: Before and Afterlives )
  • Paranormal Romance (in: Lightspeed, June 2013 )
  • For the Applause of Shadows (2013, in: Steve Berman (Ed.): Where Thy Dark Eye Glances: Queering Edgar Allan Poe )
  • Sister Twelve: Confessions of a Party Monster (2013, in: John Klima, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas (Eds.): Glitter & Mayhem )
  • Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me (2013, in: Paula Guran (Ed.): Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales )

2014:

  • The Boy Who Grew Up (in: Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2014 )

2015:

  • The Trampling (in: Nightmare Magazine, January 2015 )

2016:

  • The Creeping Women (in: Uncanny Magazine, January-February 2016 )
Anthologies (as editor)
  • Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing (2009, with Delia Sherman)

Rabid Transit (with Barth Anderson, Alan DeNiro and Kristin Livdahl as The Ratbastards)

  • Rabid Transit: New Fiction by the Ratbastards (2002)
  • Rabid Transit: A Mischief of Rats (2003)
  • Rabid Transit: Petting Zoo (2004)
  • Rabid Transit: Menagerie (2005)
  • Rabid Transit: Long Voyages, Great Lies (2006)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christopher Barzak: Imaginary Autobiography. In: Locus # 570 (July 2008; excerpts , accessed December 26, 2018).
  2. ↑ Christopher Barzak - Bio , accessed December 26, 2018.
  3. ↑ Edward J. Rathke: 52 Weeks / 52 Interviews: Week 27: Christopher Barzak . Interview from July 3, 2014, accessed on December 26, 2018.
  4. ^ "So for me the interstitial is both a way of treating the fantastic as if it is real, and the real as if it's strange, and also a way for me to push against the rules of the techniques and various aspects of fiction structure and point of view, etc. — that I've chosen to use in a given piece. ”Colleen Mondor, Christopher Barzak, Delia Sherman: Afterwords: An Interstitial Interview. In: Christopher Barzak, Delia Sherman (Eds.): Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing. Small Beer Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-931520-61-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Barzak, Christopher
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barzak, Christopher Michael (full name); Ratbastards (pseudonym); Barzak, Chris (alternative spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH Warren , Ohio