Short stories by Jeffrey Ford
Jeffrey Ford (born November 8, 1955) is an American writer in the fantastic genre tradition, although his works have spanned genres including fantasy, science fiction, and mystery. His work is characterized by a sweeping imaginative power, humor, literary allusion, and a fascination with tales told within tales. He is a graduate of Binghamton University, where he studied with the novelist John Gardner.
He lives in Ohio and teaches writing part-time at Ohio Wesleyan University. He has also taught as a guest lecturer at the Clarion Workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers (2004 and 2012), The Antioch University Summer Writing Workshop (2013), LitReactor – 4 Week Online Horror Writing Course (2012), University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing (2011), The Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington, (2010).
Ford has contributed over 130 original short stories to numerous print and online magazines and anthologies: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, MAD Magazine, Weird Tales, Clarkesworld Magazine, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Subterranean, Fantasy Magazine, The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, New Jersey Noir, Stories, The Living Dead, The Faery Reel, After, The Dark, The Doll Collection_, etc. His fiction has been translated into over fifteen languages and published around the world.
Listing 5 stories.
In the depths of his mind, a writer tries to uncover the autonomous, nefarious motivations of his own characters.
Two characters who are unknowingly tied up in the pursuit of the same businessman find themselves in rural Japan, hunted by supernatural forces.
A famous poet wakes up in the afterlife but wishes to be alive, and death offers her a deal. If she kills a boy, she can live for 25 more years.
A group of college students home for their last summer break before graduation may get more than they bargained for when they plan to excavate an ancient relic.
A middle aged man comes across an old museum for Word Dolls on the side of the road, where he meets and older woman who tells him old horror stories from the farms nearby. She tells him about the Mower Manc, a murderer who used to roam the fields only for the Word Doll museum to disappear mysteriously afterword.