'Readers want to participate'

 

“Iwrite in expectation that readers want to participate in a kind of two-sidedgame: They are trying to guess what I am up to - what the story's up to - andI'm giving them clues and matter to keep them interested without giving everythingaway at the start.” – John Crowley

Born in Maine on this date in 1942,Crowley went to high school and college in Indiana before moving to NewYork City “to make movies,” starting his career in documentary films.   In 1975, his first novel The Deepestablished him in the science fiction and fantasy field.  His most recent tale is 2022’s Flint and Mirror:  A Novel of History and Magic.

 

Crowley’s best-known book is Little,Big, winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.  The book melds the story of a New York familywith a “fairy world” community over a hundred-year period and is a terrificstudy in family dynamics and compassion. Critics have lauded it as “The best fantasy book ever” and “The closestachievement we have to the Alice stories of Lewis Carroll.” 

 

Recipient of the World Fantasy Awardfor Life Achievement, Crowley also is a longtime creative writing teacher atYale and has taught annually at the Clarion West Writers' Workshop in Seattle for three decades.

 

“I've always had a compassion forcharacters in novels,” Crowley noted.   “Theyare, whatever they might think, living in a world that has a shape they don'tknow and can't finally alter.”

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