At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories (46 page)

“Story Kit,”
Eclipse 4
, Night Shade Books
,
2011.

“Wolf Trapping,”
The Twilight Zone Magazine,
April 1989.

“Ponies,” Tor.com, November 2010.

“The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles,” Tor.com, July 2009.

“Spar,”
Clarkesworld Magazine,
October 2009.

“The Man Who Bridged the Mist,”
Asimov’s Magazine,
October/November 2011.

“The Evolution of Trickster Stories among the Dogs of North Park after the Change,”
The Coyote Road,
Avon Books, 2007.

Acknowledgments

Many years of writing short fiction means that I have had the opportunity to learn from a lot of people, too many to list. I would like to specifically acknowledge the following people, who helped significantly with these particular stories.

Editors: Neil Clarke, Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Tappan King, Shawna McCarthy, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Kris Rusch, Pamela Sargent, Stan Schmidt, Jonathan Strahan, Sheila Williams, and Terri Windling; and Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link.

Muses: Ed Bryant, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Samuel Delany, Bob Howe, Lucy Huntington, Peg Kerr, John Kessel, Ursula K. Le Guin, Chris McKitterick, Irene Michon, Lane Robins, Vivi Trujillo, Eric Warren, Barbara Webb (
especially
Barbara Webb), Connie Willis, the students and faculty of North Carolina State University’s MFA program, my own students, and ten thousand
cafés au lait
at innumerable coffee shops.

Finally, I owe more than I can say to James Gunn, who taught me as much as anyone could about writing science fiction.

About the Author

Kij Johnson’s short stories have received the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, World Fantasy, and Nebula Awards. Her novels include two volumes of the Heian trilogy Love/War/Death:
The Fox Woman
(which received the Crawford Award) and
Fudoki
. She is currently researching a third novel set in Heian Japan; and
Kylen
, two novels set in Georgian Britain.

She taught writing and science fiction writing at Louisiana State University and at the University of Kansas. She has run chain and independent bookstores and has worked at Tor Books, Dark Horse Comics, Wizards of the Coast, Microsoft, Real Networks, as well as worked as a radio announcer and engineer, edited cryptic crosswords, and waitressed in a strip bar. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and is an Assistant Professor of Fiction Writing at the University of Kansas English Department.

Recent and forthcoming short story collections and novels from

Small Beer Press for independently minded readers:

Joan Aiken,
The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories

“Wildly inventive, darkly lyrical, and always surprising.”
—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

Ted Chiang,
Stories of Your Life and Others

“Shining, haunting, mind-blowing tales”—Junot Díaz (
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
)

Karen Joy Fowler,
What I Didn’t See and Other Stories

“An exceptionally versatile author.”—
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Angélica Gorodischer,
Kalpa Imperial
(trans. Ursula K. Le Guin);

Trafalgar*
(trans. by Amalia Gladheart)

Elizabeth Hand,
Errantry: Stories*

Nancy Kress,
Fountain of Age: Stories

“A master class in the art of short-story writing.”—
Kirkus Reviews

The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin*

In two volumes:
Where on Earth
&
Outer Space, Inner Land

Kelly Link,
Magic for Beginners; Stranger Things Happen

Karen Lord,
Redemption in Indigo

Mythopoeic, Crawford, & Frank Collymore Award winner

Maureen F. McHugh,
After the Apocalypse: Stories

“Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising.”
—Publishers Weekly
Top 10 Books of 2011

Geoff Ryman,
Paradise Tales

“Includes one of the most powerful stories I’ve read in the last 10 years.”
—New York Times

Sofia Samatar,
A Stranger in Olondria*

“A story of ghosts and books, treachery and mystery, ingeniously conceived and beautifully written. One of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in recent years.”—Jeffrey Ford (
The Girl in the Glass
)

*Forthcoming

Our ebooks are available from our indie press ebooksite:

www.weightlessbooks.com

www.smallbeerpress.com

• 26 Monkeys,Also the Abyss
  
• Fox Magic
  
• Names for Water
  
• The Bitey Cat
  
• The Horse Raiders
  
• Dia Chjerman’s Tale
  
• My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire—Exposition on the Flaws in My Wife’s Character—The Nature of the Bird—The Possible Causes—Her Final Disposition.
  
• Schrödinger’s Cathouse
  
• Chenting, in the Land of the Dead
  
• The Empress Jingu Fishes
  
• At the Mouth of the River of Bees
  
• Story Kit
  
• Wolf Trapping
  
• Ponies
  
• The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles
  
• Spar
  
• The Man Who Bridged the Mist
  
• The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change
  
• Publication History
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• About the Author