Christopher Barzak

Category: Recommendations

  • Invisible Men

    Just a short note to say my novelette, “Invisible Men,” has been published on Eclipse Online.  You can read it by clicking here.  And don’t forget to leave a comment at the end of the story’s page if you enjoyed it. It’s a retelling of The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells. Thanks for reading!

  • New Music Crush

    Robyn is weird.  I barely remember her former early 90’s self, which was largely forgettable over-produced, mediocre dance music/love ballads that sounded like the dance music/love ballads of the time.  But thanks to the most recent episode of Saturday Night Live, I was turned on to Robyn’s reinvented contemporary self, and she made some really…

  • Attack of the Killer Collections

    Every year around this season of gift giving, I see lots of posts by writers and readers and online stores, advising people what books would make great gifts.  Usually, these lists consist entirely of novels.  I’m a big fan of novels, but I might be an even bigger fan of short story collections.  But even…

  • Pre-viewing, pre-ordering, pre-mourning

    There have been lots of pre-reviews of this anthology popping up in the past month or two, all of them positive. I’m happy to be included in this review as one of the reviewer’s “favorites”. If you go to Amazon.com right now, you can pre-order the book at an extremely reduced price. Incidentally, this story…

  • 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…

  • This Year/New Year

    Happy New Year to everyone!  I’m excited to start over, however arbitrary a choice in time to do so it is, or perhaps however traditional/stereotypical a time it is to start anew, and look forward to a year of pursuing new writing, new relationships, new growth in myriad dimensions (I’m considering a move to an…

  • Holiday

    Last minute shoppers, looking for a good book to give at the holidays?  Take a chance on M. Rickert’s new short story collection, Holiday.  Mary Rickert’s stories are absolutely full of wonder and frightening circumstances, sometimes creepy and other times sad or joyful.  She’s one of the best short story writers out there, period, in…

  • Fall Recap

    The end of autumn.  It’s been a busy semester.  The student group I advise has created an awesome new online literary magazine called “jenny”.  I posted about this a little over a month ago, and now the site is live.  We had a launch party with over a hundred people in attendance at Dorian Books…

  • 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…