Portable Black Magic: Tales of the Afro Strange

Stephen King once said that books are portable magic. Ran Walker decided to take this phrase a bit more literally in his third short story collection, bringing to life vibrant new landscapes of both the strange and the familiar.

A writer finds himself in a love triangle where one of the women is a ghost. A woman discovers that her cure for alopecia has unintended consequences. An artist paints a woman he has been dreaming about, only to discover his dreams might be closer to reality than he thought. A graduating senior learns the true value of sacrifice. A guy professes his love for his girlfriend through an overwhelming metaphor. A social media-focused couple welcomes the world into their adoption struggles. And a relationship is threatened when a childhood secret is revealed.

In these seven stories, Walker paints a world where nothing is quite as it seems.

Author: Ran Walker
Publisher: 45 Alternate Press, LLC
Published: 10/01/2019
Pages: 164
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.28lbs
Size: 7.00h x 4.37w x 0.35d
ISBN: 9781020001000

About the Author
Walker, Ran: - Ran Walker is the author of seventeen books. He has written novels, novellas, short stories, flash fiction, microfiction, and poetry. His short stories, flash fiction, microfiction, and poetry have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals. Prior to becoming a writer and educator, he worked in magazine publishing and practiced law in Mississippi. He is the winner of the 2019 National Indie Author of the Year Award (selected by judges from Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly, IngramSpark, St. Martin's Press, and Writer's Digest), the 2019 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Best Fiction Ebook Award, and the 2018 Virginia Indie Author Project Award for Adult Fiction. He is also the recipient of both a 2005 Mississippi Arts Commission/NEA artist grant and a 2006 artist mini-grant. He served as an Artist-in-Residence with the Mississippi Arts Commission in 2006. Additionally, he is a past participant in the Hurston-Wright Writers Week Workshop and is the recipient of a fellowship from the Callaloo Writers Workshop. His novel Mojo's Guitar was translated by renowned French translator Philippe Loubat-Delranc and published in April 2015 by Éditions Autrement as Il était une fois Morris Jones. The novel was recently republished in May of 2019 as a part of Éditions Autrement's Les Grands Romans collection. His first collection of poetry, Most of My Heroes Don't Appear On No Stamps: Kwansabas, will be published in August of 2019 by The University of Hell Press, based out of Portland, Oregon. Ran is a graduate of Morehouse College (BA in English), Pace University (MS in Publishing), and George Washington University Law School (JD). He also has a Certificate in Publishing from New York University and has done graduate work in English at Mississippi State University. Ran is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Hampton University and lives in Virginia with his wife and much better half, Lauren, and his amazing little rockstar daughter, Zoë.