Christopher Rowe

Welcome

This is the online home of Christopher Rowe, science fiction and fantasy author, great cook, raconteur, and independent bookseller. (Some of these things may be lies. Or none of them.) 

He is the author of the acclaimed story collection, Telling the Map (Small Beer Press), as well as a middle grade series, the Supernormal Sleuthing Service (Greenwillow), co-written with his wife, author Gwenda Bond. He has also published a couple of dozen stories, and been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. His work has been frequently reprinted, translated into a half-dozen languages around the world, and praised by the New York Times Book Review. His story “Another World For Map is Faith” made the long list in the 2007 Best American Short Stories volume, and his early fiction was collected in a chapbook, Bittersweet Creek and Other Stories, also by Small Beer Press. His most recent stories are “Jack of Coins” and "Knowledgeable Creatures" at Tor.com, selected by editor Ellen Datlow.

He has an MFA from the Bluegrass Writers Workshop and lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with his wife and their many pets. 

 

His first novel, Sandstorm, fulfilled his childhood dream of writing a D&D novel and was published by Wizards of the Coast. He doesn't blog nearly often enough, but when he does, you can find the entries below. If you want to catch him more regularly, he's frequently time-wasting at Facebook.

A reading

This past Sunday, my peers in the Bluegrass Writers Workshop and I finished up our Winter Residency with a group reading. I thought I'd share the two pieces I read with all y'all. Both of them are from a pretty long time ago, but they were fun to read.

First, my one and only published poem, which appeared in November 2001 in the ninth issue of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. I wrote the original version of this found poem for a creative writing class under Frederick Smock at the University Louisville even longer ago than that. Before the war, even.

OUR PRIZE PATROL WILL FIND YOU, NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE

Dear CHRISTOPH ROWE,
Congratulations!

You have passed through
Phases one and two
And have entered
The final phase.

Do not forget
To completely fill out every line.

Do not neglect
The many supplemental prize stamps.

Do not overlook
Our fabulous offers.
Where else will you find savings such as these?

Do not delay, CHRISTOPH ROWE.
Affix the proper postage.
Sign the certificate.

There is simply
Too
Much
At stake.

And then I read a piece of flash fiction (based on a true story!) which I wrote as a birthday present for Gwenda and which guest stars the late, great George Rowe the Dog, Poster Boy For American Values. "Seared Scallops and Steamed Green Beans" first appeared in the webzine Infinite Matrix on July 12th, 2003 in honor of Gwenda's birthday, and was then reprinted in the Two Cranes Press anthology Scattered, Covered, Smothered in 2004. You can read it here.