Christopher Barzak

Category: Ohio

  • Sneak Peeks of Before and Afterlives (The Ghost Hunter’s Beautiful Daughter)

    Today’s preview from Before and Afterlives is the opening of my story, “The Ghost Hunter’s Beautiful Daughter,” which originally appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction. It’s a story about a young girl named Sylvie, who has a talent for manifesting ghosts around her, making them visible to others. And it’s about how her father, an out-of-work laborer, recently widowed,…

  • One for Sorrow AKA Jamie Marks is Dead

    I have good news at the end of 2012. My novel One for Sorrow‘s film rights have officially been sold, and filming will begin shortly in the new year, from what I understand. This has been a long-term project for the director/script writer and the production company he has assembled since he first optioned the…

  • Map for a Forgotten Valley and 631

    Dear Locals (and those traveling nearby) who will be around Youngstown on February 15th.  I am giving a reading from my series of creative nonfiction vignettes called “Map for a Forgotten Valley”, along with a showing of Derek Jones’ short film “631”.  Here is a blurb of what the evening will look like.  Please click…

  • Another piece of the map

    For those of you who may have read the vignettes in Map for a Forgotten Valley that I published last month, another piece of that map has recently been published by Muse, a Cleveland magazine.  You can read the whole issue of Muse by visiting their website and downloading the pdf of the issue.  Along…

  • Introducing “jenny”

    “jenny” is something my students in the Literary Arts Association at YSU have been busily preparing as a new online literary magazine.  This is a radically energetic and creative group of students, and I’m really proud to be working with them as they put together something new and electric like this.  Please take a look…

  • Best Beer Store in the World

    Hello, World.  Did you know a Youngstown area retailer/pub is rated the best beer store in the world?  I didn’t until today, when my friend Peter Oresick sent me this link to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s article about Vintage Estates, which is just over the border of Youngstown in Boardman, one of the suburbs.  I certainly…

  • The Ghost Hunter’s Beautiful Daughter

    In the October/November issue of Asimov’s, on magazine shelves now, you will find a new story penned by me, entitled “The Ghost Hunter’s Beautiful Daughter”.  It’s set in Warren, Ohio, just a twenty minute drive from where I sit in my office on the North Side of Youngstown, an old floundering steel town with a…

  • Oakland Open House

    For local readers: The Oakland Center for the Arts announces its third annual Free Open House and Season Announcement Party on Saturday, August 29, from 6:00-9:00 pm. Hosted by the Oakland Board, the Open House is a chance for the community to get to know their community theater better. Free food, wine, punch, and beverages…

  • A small taste of America in decline

    An interactive segmented video about my home region’s loss of industry over the past thirty years, and how it may now lose its very last major manufacturer in GM.  It’s very well made, though a sad reality, and one that is now in the new century becoming the reality of more and more communities in…

  • Reading at Thurber House

    Last week was a big week for me.  Three nice things happened. 1. It was my birthday.  Fun times, growing old. 2. I got to reconnect with an old friend from college.  Fun times, rehashing when I was a youngster. 3. I read at Thurber House, In Columbus, Ohio, where the writer Jamese Thurber is…