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Jeffrey Ford

(b.1955)

Jeffrey Ford is the author of three previous story collections and eight previous novels, including the Edgar® Award-winning The Girl in the Glass and the Shirley Jackson Award-winning The Shadow Year. A former professor of writing and early American literature, Ford now writes full-time in Ohio, where he lives with his wife.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror

Series

Well-Built City Trilogy
   1. The Physiognomy (1997)
   2. Memoranda (1999)
   3. The Beyond (2001)

Novels

   Vanitas (1988)
   The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque (2002)
   The Girl in the Glass (2005)
   The Shadow Year (2008)
   Ahab's Return: Or, the Last Voyage (2018)
   Out of Body (2020)

Collections

   The Fantasy Writer's Assistant (2002)
   The Empire of Ice Cream (2006)
   The Drowned Life (2008)
   Crackpot Palace (2012)
   A Natural History of Hell (2016)
   The Best of Jeffrey Ford (2020)
   Big Dark Hole: And Other Stories (2021)

Novellas and Short Stories

   The Cosmology of the Wider World (2004)
   A Terror (2013)
   Rocket Ship to Hell (2013)
   The Thyme Fiend (2015)
   The Twilight Pariah (2017)
   Pretty Good Neighbor (2023)

Anthologies edited

A Primer to Jeffrey Ford (2019) (with Michael A Arnzen)

Series contributed to

Oz Reimagined
14. A Meeting in Oz (2013)

Jeffrey Ford recommends

The Briar Book of the Dead (2024)
A G Slatter
"Angela Slatter's The Briar Book of the Dead will, with its wonderfully clear yet enchanted prose, cast a spell on readers."

Wild Spaces (2023)
S L Coney
"A coming-of-age story, but the change in store for the boy is wonderfully unpredictable and so originally weird. Pacing is key to this piece, and the author is brilliant at it."

The Splendid City (2022)
Karen Heuler
"Karen Heuler's The Splendid City is a wonderful fabulation, both humorous and contemplative, about the desperate state of US politics and society. In this world without a moral center, Eleanor, a witch, and her black cat familiar, Stan, who walks on two legs and packs a gun, much like Behemoth from Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, are called to solve a mystery. The writing is engaging and smooth, with excellent banter, as the communal power of women works to find a purpose in a crazy world."

Burning Girls and Other Stories (2021)
Veronica Schanoes
"Brilliant tales of enviable imagination, gracefully written, and with a strong feminist center. One of the best collections I've come across in recent years."

The Invisible (2020)
(City-States Cycle)
Seb Doubinsky
"Seb Doubinsky’s The Invisible is proof positive that often less is more – its chapters neat, sharp tiles in a complex mosaic. It reminded of Simenon and Lem for noir and the politics of a dystopian hierarchy, and reminded of Doubinsky in its brushes with Egyptian mythologies and a weird untethered experience for the reader. Even if this is your first foray into the City-States Cycle, it’s as good an entry point as any. Fascinating structure, cool clear prose."

Anthropocene Rag (2020)
Alex Irvine
"Willy Wonka meets Huck Finn, Anthropocene Rag is a rare distillation of nanotech, apocalypse, and mythic Americana into a heady psychedelic brew."

Creatures of Want & Ruin (2018)
(Creatures , book 2)
Molly Tanzer
"The writing in Molly Tanzer's Creatures of Want and Ruin is so smooth you don't notice it past the first word. The story telling takes over and you just want more of Ellie West and the denizens of her world, the dead-on 1920s Long Island historical setting, the Great South Bay, the apocalyptic religious cult, the strangeness, until the end and there's no more story to go. A wonderfully engaging read!"

A Scruffian Funferal (2018)
(Fabbles, book 3)
Hal Duncan
"The language is mad genius."

Shiloh (2018)
Philip Fracassi
"A masterful, mad charge into the weird."

The Subterranean Season (2015)
Dale Bailey
"Bailey, unlike a lot contemporaries, never forgets the humor, which makes the darkness more profound."

Captains Stupendous (2014)
Rhys Hughes
"There are no easy phrases to describe Hughes' fiction; it's so exotic. His writing is incredibly precise and at the same time his imagination is so unfettered."

The Enigmatic Pilot (2011)
Kris Saknussemm
"Kris Saknussemm's Enigmatic Pilot, with its shades of Twain and Melville's Confidence Man, its own unique style and vision, sense of humor and remarkable characters, is a balls out adventure story, a fascinating "historical" account of the Civil War era, a love story, and a mirror within which a reader might glimpse the current state of the union."

Shadowbridge (2008)
(Shadowbridge, book 1)
Gregory Frost
"Beautifully written and realized."

The Traitor (2007)
(Cheek Frawg's Weird, book 1)
Michael Cisco
"Michael Cisco's The Traitor is a sinister, hilarious, and profound story, hallucinatory in its language magic... Lovers of dark fantasy will find something utterly unique and compelling here."

The Devil in Brisbane (2005)
Zoran živković
"The Devil in Brisbane is an anthology alive with all of the spontaneity, cunning, wild imagination, and artifice of its namesake. Zoran živković has conjured thirty tales of sardonic splendor from Australian writers both new and more established. In this case, the Devil is most definitely in the details."

Meet Me in the Moon Room (2001)
Ray Vukcevich
"The absurd and the profound are seamlessly joined through fine writing. Meet Me in the Moon Room is a first-rate collection."

More recommendations

Books containing stories by Jeffrey Ford

The Best Horror of the Year Volume 15 (2024)
(Best Horror of the Year, book 15)
edited by
Ellen Datlow

Uncanny Magazine Issue 55 (2023)
November/December 2023
(Uncanny Magazine, book 55)

Christmas and Other Horrors (2023)
edited by
Ellen Datlow

More books

Awards

	2009 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel : The Shadow Year
	2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection : The Fantasy Writer's Assistant: And Other Stories
	1998 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel : The Physiognomy

Award nominations

	2006 Nebula Award for Best Novel (nominee) : The Girl in the Glass
	2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel (nominee) : The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque
	2000 Nebula Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : The Fantasy Writer's Assistant [short story]

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