Books Are Magic invites you for an evening of celebrating the art of the short story, with some of the genre's newest, freshest, and funkiest voices.
Whether you're a short fiction enthusiast, a reader just dipping their toe into the ocean of story collections, or an avid short story hater, we promise there's something in this line-up of writers for everyone! Magical realism, dark humor, folklore and mythology, dreams and nightmares—you never know where the next page will bring!
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Vincent Anioke is a Nigerian-Canadian writer and software engineer. His short stories have appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Rumpus, The Masters Review, and Passages North, among others. He won the 2021 Austin Clarke Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Fiction Award and the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Perfect Little Angels is his debut story collection.
Janelle Bassett is the author of the story collection Thanks for This Riot, winner of the Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize in Fiction. She edits fiction for Split Lip Magazines and lives in St. Louis.
Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the short story collection Green Frog, which was a Good Morning America Book Buzz Pick, and the novel Sea Change, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a 2023 B&N Discover Pick, an APALA Adult Fiction Honor Book, and a New York Times Most Anticipated Book. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School.
Nicole Haroutunian (she/her) is the author of the novel-in-stories Choose This Now (Noemi Press, 2024) and the story collection Speed Dreaming (Little a, 2015). Her fiction has appeared most recently in The Georgia Review and Story. She works in museum education, holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and lives with her family in Woodside, Queens.
Ananda Lima is the author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil (Tor Books) and Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in four chapbooks, including Amblyopia (Bull City Press), and publications such as The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Witness, and elsewhere. She has served as a mentor at the New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Program and currently serves as a Program Curator at StoryStudio Chicago and a Contributing Editor at Poets & Writers. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark. Craft, her fiction debut, has received starred reviews from Kirkus Review, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, which described it as “one of the most original and unforgettable reads of the year.” Originally from Brazil, she lives in Chicago.
Shannon Robinson is author of The Ill-Fitting Skin, winner of the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Joyland, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from Washington University in St. Louis, and in 2011 she was the Writer-in-Residence at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Other honors include Nimrod's Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts, a Hedgebrook Fellowship, a Sewanee Scholarship, and an Independent Artist Award from the Maryland Arts Council. She teaches creative writing at Johns Hopkins University.
Amy Stuber is the author of the short story collection, Sad Grownups (Stillhouse Press, 2024). Her writing has appeared in New England Review, Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, American Short Fiction, Best Small Fictions, Flash Fiction America, and elsewhere. She’s the recipient of the 2023 William Peden Prize from the Missouri Review and the 2021 Fiction Prize from the Northwest Review. She holds a PhD in English, works in ed tech, and serves as an editor for Split Lip Magazine.
Lena Valencia is the author of the short story collection Mystery Lights (Tin House, August 2024). Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in BOMB, Electric Literature, Ninth Letter, Epiphany, the anthology Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2019 Elizabeth George Foundation grant and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is the managing editor and director of educational programming at One Story and the co-host of the reading series Ditmas Lit. Find out more at lenavalencia.com