(Art by Jeremy Zerfoss)
Our 12 Days of Monsters celebration ends today, and we’re thrilled with the content we’ve been able to provide to our readers. We want to thank everyone who contributed to this effort. Special thanks to IAFA and their International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Without their theme of the Monstrous, we would not have done 12 Days of Monsters — an effort to not just promote the cooler aspects of the monstrous but the conference as well.
Thanks to our readers for their tremendous interest in our 12 days – we had a great audience for all of our posts, and lots of facebook and blog link-backs. As for comments, we appreciated the enthusiasm, and also this particularly detail-rich gem from Caleb Wilson, pointing out one of his favorite monsters that is also a well-loved favorite here:
The Todal from James Thurber’s The 13 Clocks: Here’s what people say about it: It looks like a blob of gulp. It makes a sound like rabbits screaming. It smells of old, unopened rooms. It’s made of lip. It feels as if it has been dead a dozen days, but moves about like monkeys and like shadows. It gleeps. And, it’s an agent of the Devil, sent to punish evildoers for having done less evil than they should.
We also want to extend special thanks to ICFA guests of honor Kelly Link and China Mieville for going out of their way to participate, and to Genevieve Valentine, this year’s winner of the Crawford Award for best first fantasy novel (presented at the conference). Additional thanks to our managing editor Adam Mills for editing and posting most of the content, as well as Luis Rodrigues and Gregory Bossert for technical assistance.
The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) is an annual scholarly conference held annually in Orlando, Florida, and devoted to all aspects of the fantastic (broadly defined) as it appears in literature, film, and the other arts. It is sponsored by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. This year, as noted, the ICFA had a theme of “The Monstrous Fantastic.” We just returned from the conference, and had a wonderful time, which we’ve written about here.
For those of you who want an easy way to access our 12 Days of Monsters, you can use this link. But we’ve also set out the entire schedule with the links, below. We again apologize for the delay in posting an excerpt from Johanna Sinisalo’s novel Troll. In addition, material from Amos Tutuola will run at a later date. We did decide to leave the Kosher Guide free download up through Monday. If you like it, or liked this content, please use the donation button on our main page. We run off of donations. – Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
12 Days of Monsters
March 15, Thursday
“Replacements” by Lisa Tuttle (fiction)
“A Brief History of Monsters” by Theodora Goss (essay)
March 16, Friday
“Weiroot” by Jeffrey Ford (fiction)
“The Happiness of the Katakuris” by Matthew Pridham (movie review)
“The Mere Touch: Weird Reviews” by Maureen Kincaid Speller
March 17 – 18, Sat-Sun
“Creature” by Ramsey Shehadeh (fiction)
“The Monstrous in Caitlin R. Kiernan’s The Ammonite Violin” by Jeff Vandermeer (essay)
“Fascinating Monsters” by Aeron Alfrey (art gallery)
March 19, Monday
“Pretty Monsters” by Kelly Link (fiction – available one week only)
“The Third Bear” by Jeff VanderMeer (essay)
“Vampires: Mademoiselle B by Maurice Pons” by Edward Gauvin (essay)
»Free download of Jeff VanderMeer’s essay collection Monstrous Creatures
March 20, Tuesday
“Monsters and The Weird with China Mieville” (interview)
“The Weird’s Bestiary” by Leah Thomas (art gallery)
“The Grotesque Manageries of Greg Simkins” by Nancy Hightower (art essay)
March 21, Wednesday
“The Dire Wolf” by Genevieve Valentine (fiction)
“Werewolves” by Ekaterina Sedia (editorial)
“Long Live Underwolf: Discovering Tristan Egolf’s Kornwolf” by Jesse Bullington (review)
March 22, Thursday
“Blood Makes Noise” by Gemma Files (fiction)
“Complicit in Their Own Derangement: An Interview with Gemma Files”
March 23, Friday
“My Favorite Monster” (responses from 50 writers, including Mike Mignola, Christopher Fowler, Karen Lord, Stephen Graham Jones, Rikki Ducornet, Rachel Pollack, Karen Lord.)
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz’s Favorite Monster
Livia Llewellyen’s Favorite Monster
» free offer: download the Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals e‑book
March 24 – 25, Sat-Sun
“The Dust Enforcer” by Reza Negarestani (fiction-philosophy)
“Scandalous Monsters” by John Langan (essay)
March 26th
“Reading the Weird” by Leah Thomas (comic, with special epilogue)
“The Thing in the Jar” by Michael Cisco (fiction)
“The Thing in the Hall” by E.F. Benson (fiction)
“The Thing in the Cellar” by David H. Keller (fiction)
“The Thing in the Weeds” by William Hope Hodgson (fiction)
“Underneath the Skin: John Carpenter’s The Thing, and You ” by Matthew Pridham (essay)
I thought this was an amazing theme! Great content, great info! Thanks so much for running it!
Thanks!
Pingback: March Madness « Nancy Hightower
I am the person who could care less who wrote the books, I’m excited for every awards season because there are bound to be books on the list that I haven’t even heard of, let alone read, and that inspires me to broaden my reading horizons. I know it is the “happening” thing to complain about awards for any number of reasons whenever announcements are made but I for one am still enamored of the process and choose to be optimistic about the enjoyment that can be gained from the way in which the awards season can bring people together to talk about things we are passionate about, in particular science fiction and fantasy. Thanks!
12 memorable days of monsters