Delicious Strangeness: A Pocket Guide to Magical Realism

Are you fascinated (or maybe just intimidated!) by Gabriel García Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude? Do you love Kafka, George Saunders, Gogol, Leslie Marmon Silko, Colson Whitehead, Kathleen Alcalá, and Aimee Bender? All of these writers have one big feature in common: they are all working with a kind of writing called Magical Realism. What is it? And how do you write it? Fiction writer and award winning teacher Stephanie Barbé Hammer uses prompts, games, and simple explanations to demystify Magical Realism AND show writers how to have fun writing it. You'll learn how to mix language, points of view, and plot in new and exciting combinations that will result in stories that are flavorful, distinctive, deep, and unforgettable. Delicious Strangeness will add zest to your writing whether you are new to fiction writíing or are a seasoned (!) professional.

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a 5-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She has published work in The Bellevue Literary Review, Pearl, the James Franco Review, and the Hayden’s Ferry Review among other places. She is the author of the prose poem chapbook Sex with Buildings (Dancing Girl Press), a full-length poetry collection, How Formal? (Spout Hill Press), and a magical realist novel, The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior (Urban Farmhouse Press). A former New Yorker, Stephanie now lives in Coupeville WA with interfaith blogger/author Larry Behrendt. She is currently working on a poetry collection about a relentless urbanite navigating a rural habitat, a novella about a Beverly Hills teenager who wants to be a plumber, and a novel about 2 mixed up women with magical powers searching for a missing person on a vintage train bound for Montreal.