Essay in LampLight 6.1 / Upcoming Lovecraft Talk

For those who didn’t catch my essay on horror in flash fiction, originally published in Thinking Horror 1, it’s now available in LampLight. Volume 6.1 is currently available in e-book and will soon be available in print. The issue includes the usual array of goodness, and it features Damien Angelica Walters.

Next week I’ll have the pleasure and honor of giving a brown bag talk at the English Faculty Forum at my university (VCU). It will be Wednesday, November 8, 2017. “Aesthetic Experiments: H. P. Lovecraft and ‘Pickman’s Model’ in 1927.” Noon-1:00, in 308 Hibbs Hall. Free and open to the community at large. I’ll be speaking with my “librarian hat” on, although as time goes by, the different hats seem to be increasingly difficult of distinction. This talk is part of a project that I’ve been poking at from multiple angles in recent years, and which is starting to resemble an academic monograph. TBD.

For those finding this site before the talk at VCU and wanting to know more about what I do, the “About” and “Publications” pages linked above should be of some help. The “Weird Fiction Publishers” page is a list of publishers I update occasionally and maintain for my own use and that of the community of weird fiction readers, writers, publishers, etc. If you want an idea of what people look for here, these are some of the most popular posts:

752 views — Anthropocene Ghosts and Other Collateral Damage in Moldova (Spectral, 2016)
519 views — Finding Women in Horror and Weird Fiction
514 views — On the Existence of the Female Tentacle
409 views — The Hugos: Shenanigans & Unpopular Opinions
246 views — Release the Leeches!
184 views — Aickman’s Heirs
147 views — Lovecraft, Joshi, The Head, and Fantasy in 2014 (and 2100)

ICFA 36

This year I’m attending and presenting at ICFA 36. My paper will be in Oak on Friday, March 20, 2015, 2:30-4 p.m. It’s entitled “Node, Edge, or Tentacle: Data and the Lovecraftian Literary Network,” and it’s part of a panel entitled “All Hail the King: Lovecraft and Nothing But,” chaired by Rhonda Brock-Servais. My fellow panelists look to be talking on interested subjects, including monster deities, and how we understand the Other in Lovecraft and Ligotti.

This is one of those events where the whenworldscollide tag is especially appropriate. I’ve been reading HPL for something like a quarter century, write fiction that often falls somewhere on the spectrum between Lovecraftian and the Weird, and will be presenting on a topic that I wouldn’t really ever have approached without exposure to the digital humanities through my work as a librarian. Here’s to life’s pleasant and useful confluences.

If you’re going to ICFA, I look forward to meeting you there!