LIKE SMOKE, LIKE LIGHT, Yukimi Ogawa’s debut collection, coming June 2023
As I mentioned in the double cover reveal for Theodora Goss’s The Collected Enchantments and C. S. E. Cooney’s The Twice-Drowned Saint, Mythic Delirium Books plans to rev up with flourishes in 2023, our 25th anniversary year.
Here’s another aspect of those efforts that I am incredibly proud to share: it pleases me greatly to announce the acquisition of Yukimi Ogawa’s debut collection of short fiction, Like Smoke, Like Light: Stories.
Here’s text from a press release about Yukimi’s amazing book:
In this debut collection of breath-taking, genre-blending short stories, Yukimi Ogawa explores realms of folklore and fantastic new worlds. Within these moving, imagination-stretching tales, the dawn of history, the travails of the present and the outer reaches of space and time are all home to creatures of fantasy and of Japanese legends, who intermingle with their environments in surprising and delightful ways. In a series of connected stories, a once-hidden island admits tourists from the outside world to meet inhabitants colored like jewels and cognizant of extrasensory patterns. Most importantly, all of these dense, rich and complex interstitial stories focus on relationships and family, creating a feast for both the mind and the heart.
“At pure surface level, these works appear rooted in the fantastical and magical, but as soon as you think you’ve found your footing and understand where you are, Ogawa warps your perception almost imperceptibly until the world is completely unfamiliar again. In Yukimi Ogawa, we’ve gained a unique voice and a singular interpreter of the speculative in our ranks. She challenges deeply held attitudes and preconceptions about what’s possible regarding structure, tone, and genre itself.” — Tor.com
Here’s the table of contents as it currently stands:
Like Smoke, Like Light Perfect Welcome to the Haunted House The Colorless Thief The Flying Head at the Edge of Night In Her Head, in Her Eyes Town’s End Taste of Opal Hundred Eye Grayer Than Lead, Heavier Than Snow Rib The Shroud for the Mourners Blue Grey Blue Ripen Ever Changing, Ever Turning Nini The Tree, and the Center of the World
Author bio:
Yukimi Ogawa lives in a small town in Tokyo where she writes in English but never speaks the language. She still wonders why it works that way. Her fiction can be found in such places as Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons. In 2021, she was finally translated into Japanese.
The sharp-eyed might well have noticed that the announcement of Ogawa’s collection appeared in Publishers Weekly before it appeared on the Mythic Delirium site, a testament to how challenging this past year has been for us.
Anita and I really excited about moving forward with this project. There’s going to be even more news to share about Yukimi’s book, and other projects, in the new year!
