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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.

Awards: WFA (2017), Jackson (2017), Edgar (2006), Nebula (2004) see all

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 (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 (2021)

Novellas and Short Stories

The Cosmology of the Wider World (2004)
The Twilight Pariah (2017)

Anthologies edited

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

Series contributed to

Oz Reimagined
14. A Meeting in Oz (2013)

Tor.Com Original
   A Terror (2013)
   Rocket Ship to Hell (2013)
   The Thyme Fiend (2015)
   Pretty Good Neighbor (2023)

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

	2017 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection : A Natural History of Hell
	2017 Shirley Jackson Award for Single-Author Collection : A Natural History of Hell
	2013 Shirley Jackson Award for Single-Author Collection : Crackpot Palace
	2013 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Fiction : A Natural History of Autumn
	2009 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel : The Shadow Year
	2009 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection : The Drowned Life
	2009 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel : The Shadow Year
	2007 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella : Botch Town
	2006 Edgar Award for Best Paperback original : The Girl in the Glass
	2004 Nebula Award for Best Novelette : The Empire of Ice Cream
	2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story : Creation
	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

	2022 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection (nominee) : Big Dark Hole
	2022 Locus Award for Best Collection (nominee) : Big Dark Hole
	2021 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection (nominee) : The Best of Jeffrey Ford
	2021 Locus Award for Best Collection (nominee) : The Best of Jeffrey Ford
	2019 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (nominee) : Ahab's Return: Or, the Last Voyage
	2017 Locus Award for Best Collection (nominee) : A Natural History of Hell
	2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette (nominee) : The Thyme Fiend
	2014 Locus Award for Best Novelette (nominee) : A Terror
	2013 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : A Natural History of Autumn
	2013 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette (nominee) : The Wish Head
	2013 Locus Award for Best Novelette (nominee) : The Wish Head
	2013 Locus Award for Best Collection (nominee) : Crackpot Palace
	2012 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novelette (nominee) : The Last Triangle
	2009 Nebula Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : The Dreaming Wind
	2009 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (nominee) : The Shadow Year
	2009 Locus Award for Best Collection (nominee) : The Drowned Life
	2008 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (nominee) : The Dreaming Wind
	2007 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : The Way He Does It
	2007 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection (nominee) : The Empire of Ice Cream
	2007 Locus Award for Best Novella (nominee) : Botch Town
	2007 Locus Award for Best Collection (nominee) : The Empire of Ice Cream
	2006 Nebula Award for Best Novel (nominee) : The Girl in the Glass
	2006 Locus Award for Best Novella (nominee) : The Cosmology of the Wider World
	2006 British Fantasy Award for Best Novella (nominee) : The Cosmology of the Wider World
	2006 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection (nominee) : The Empire of Ice Cream
	2004 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella (nominee) : The Empire of Ice Cream
	2004 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (nominee) : The Empire of Ice Cream
	2004 Hugo Award for Best Novelette (nominee) : The Empire of Ice Cream
	2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : The Weight of Words
	2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel (nominee) : The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque
	2003 Nebula Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : Creation
	2003 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (nominee) : The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque
	2003 Locus Award for Best Collection (nominee) : The Fantasy Writer's Assistant: And Other Stories
	2003 Hugo Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : Creation
	2002 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : The Honeyed Knot
	2002 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (nominee) : The Beyond
	2001 Nebula Award for Best Short Story (nominee) : The Fantasy Writer's Assistant [short story]

Jeffrey Ford recommends

The Naming Song (2024)
Jedediah Berry
"In Jedediah Berry's The Naming Song I perceive the simplicity and complexity of Richard Brautigan's Watermelon Sugar, a structure that could have been borrowed from Berry's own card game, The Family Arcana, and a nod to The Romance of the Rose. Still, it's wholly its own engaging creature that engenders wonder and suggests a new kind of fiction."

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."

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