While continuing the tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler, Carma Lynn Park’s debut collection of speculative fiction is a category of its own. In both short story and free verse forms, Park builds worlds in which petticoats co-exist with gene splicing, a space-traveling robot is transformed by a visit to a pre-industrial town festival, and a Medieval-like battle on a spaceship is fueled by caffeine. Dying is never far away in the realms Park creates, but neither is the afterlife; both are equally melancholy and magical, often darkly humorous. Park is in a conversation with her New Weird and slipstream fiction contemporaries, but her rich imagery and deft syntax distinguish her as a unique storyteller with a poet’s voice.
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About the Author: Carma Lynn Park is a Chicago-based writer, poet, and photographer. Her mother passed on a love of writing, and her father gave her a taste for fantasy and science fiction. She fondly remembers sitting on the cold linoleum floor of the back porch surrounded by cardboard boxes of fantasy and science fiction magazines.
You can read more of Carma’s poems and see some of her photographs on her website, carmalynnpark.com.