“Mysteries of the Old Quarter” by Paul Park will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Jennifer Konieczny interviews Park on the story. 

To borrow Dr. Delorme’s question, do you think “it possible that we are haunted in dreams by our beloved dead, not just in metaphor but in actual fact?”

I do think it’s possible. I think it would be foolish to be sure, one way or the other. I’m of an age now when I’ve lost some people who were precious to me, and when they appear suddenly in memory, or else unbidden in the mind’s eye, as clearly as if they had walked into a room where I was sitting, I must wonder if I am the only one who is responsible. How strange it is that we can see people so clearly, and not just in dreams, and not because there is some reason we have summoned them, or some chain of cause and effect that leads back to them. But in the midst of some other activity we can turn around and see them, and feel their presence, as if they’d put their hand upon our arm.

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“The Fox Maiden” by Priya Sharma will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Gina Guadagnino interviews Sharma on the story.

Fox hunting is a vexed subject for many people, given the history of the sport and the allegations of cruelty that led to its being banned in many countries. What kind of research did you do on fox hunting for this piece?

I once visited a stately home with a hunting room, which horrible and fascinating. It was a window into a world that’s utterly foreign to me. There was a photo of a young girl who’d been bloodied (it was her first hunt and her face had been daubed with fox blood).

I did some reading on fox hunting but I did more reading on foxes. I think they’re gorgeous. I can assure you that no foxes were harmed during the writing of this story.

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“Lord Dunsany’s Teapot” by Naomi Novik will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Erin Stocks interviews Novik on the story.

“He held it between his hands while the heat but not the scent faded, and sipped peace as long as it lasted.” Peace in a teapot is a lovely notion. Will you tell us a little about how you came up with the origins of “Lord Dunsany’s Teapot?”

This story was part of the wonderful anthology The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, where the challenge was to envision a mysterious artifact that might have been auctioned off after having been found in the estate of a very strange collector, and tell its story.

Trying to think of the appropriate dates, when such an artifact might have come into the collector’s hands, I had the vague sense that the death of Lord Dunsany (a wonderful pre-Tolkien author of fantasy) might have worked, and from there the idea quickly took form of a teapot that might have come into his hands, and the First World War the center of the experience.

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“The Summer People” by Kelly Link will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2012 edited by Rich Horton. Erin Stocks interviews Link on the story. 

Fran’s reaction to the unusual and unworldly elements of her life–taking them all in stride and not even blinking an eye–provides a nice contrast to Ophelia’s (and possibly the reader’s) reactions. How did you go about writing the juxtaposition between the two girls? 

Well, as the writer, you have to imagine how your characters look at the world. You take things in (or don’t) depending on whether or not you’ve grown up in a environment where there are particular kinds of danger or risk or responsibility. Ophelia comes from a rich family, she’s gay, and she’s been bullied. So she would be sensitive to particular kinds of situations and risk and blind to others. She’s susceptible to overtures of friendship, because she’s lonely. She is attracted to the idea of magic and the fantastic, maybe because she’s been protected from the true cost of things. (I think that often magic seems like a kind of currency–you get marvelous  things! Magic can belong to you!) Fran, on the other hand, is self-reliant. She knows what things like magic and family cost. In her eyes, friendship isn’t something affordable.

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“Some of them Closer” by Marissa Lingen will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2012 edited by Rich Horton. Jennifer Konieczny interviews Lingen on the story.

When Mireille retrieves the three boxes she saved before leaving, she reflects, “Once you do the math on what will keep for a hundred years, it’s a lot easier to give away the things you can’t take with you.” What would you store for a hundred years?

I have here on my desk a little cup that glows sparklies when you shine ultraviolet light into it, and I put my late grandfather’s jewelry into it and my late great-grandmother’s jewelry. That would definitely go in the box, and depending on which relatives had gone before me, there might be a few more family pieces in it by then. A lot of what I’m emotionally attached to is either really easy to preserve digitally and recopy–this person’s books, that person’s photos–or very difficult to store for a hundred years intact. I have in my house my great-grandmother’s piano. If I do the math, it’s nearing a hundred years in the family already, and I have no intention of getting rid of it any time soon, but if I was going to be gone for a hundred years, could I store it? I don’t know. I don’t know if we could preserve my great-grandfather’s Kipling, but I’d sure try.

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