Andrew K. Clark and Nathan Ballingrud

Name: Andrew K. Clark and Nathan Ballingrud
Start: 2025-01-25T15:00:00-05:00
Location: 3 East Jackson Street, Sylva, NC, United States, North Carolina 28779

Schedule

Sat, 25 Jan, 2025 at 03:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

3 East Jackson Street, Sylva, NC, United States, North Carolina 28779 | Sylva, NC

Asheville authors Andrew K. Clark and Nathan Ballingrud visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, January 25th at 3:00pm to present their new novels "Where Dark Things Grow" and "Crypt of the Moon Spider".
Fifteen-year-old Leo is watching the world crumble. His father is missing and his mother is slipping into madness as she cares for Leo, his sick sister Goldfish, and two useless brothers. Relatives are no help and the church folk have turned their backs in the middle of the Great Depression.
When he discovers an enchanted wulver from ancient folklore that will do his bidding, he decides to settle old scores. Revenge is sweet, but Leo soon learns he can’t control what he’s unleashed. It takes his spitfire best friend Lilyfax to help Leo overcome his anger and try to escape the wulver’s evil. As they search for his father, Leo, Lilyfax, and friends are pursued by dark forces and pulled into a rescue effort to find and save trafficked girls rumored to have been taken by the mysterious Blue Man. Featuring elements of horror, folklore, and magical realism, "Where Dark Things Grow" is a dark bildungsroman set squarely in the place and culture of the 1930s Southern Appalachian Mountains.
"Crypt of the Moon Spider" is a dark and dreamy tale of horror, corruption, and identity spun into the stickiest of webs.
Years ago, in a cave beneath the dense forests and streams on the surface of the moon, a gargantuan spider once lived. Its silk granted its first worshippers immense faculties of power and awe.
It’s now 1923 and Veronica Brinkley is touching down on the moon for her intake at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. A renowned facility, Dr. Barrington Cull’s invasive and highly successful treatments have been lauded by many. And they’re so simple! All it takes is a little spider silk in the amygdala, maybe a strand or two in the prefrontal cortex, and perhaps an inch in the hippocampus for near evisceration of those troublesome thoughts and ideas. But patients aren’t the only ones with trouble on their minds, and although the spider’s been dead for years, its denizens are not. Someone or something is up to no good, and Veronica just might be the cause.
Andrew K. Clark’s poetry collection, "Jesus in the Trailer", was published by Main Street Rag Press, and his debut novel, "Where Dark Things Grow", is forthcoming from Cowboy Jamboree Press. His work has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, UCLA’s Out of Anonymity, Appalachian Review, Rappahannock Review, and The Wrath Bearing Tree. He received his MFA from Converse College. A Western North Carolina native, Clark lives outside Asheville, NC. Connect with him at andrewkclark.com or on social media through Threads, X, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok: @theandrewkclark.
Nathan Ballingrud is the author of "The Strange, Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell", and "North American Lake Monsters". He’s twice won the Shirley Jackson Award, and has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and Locus Awards. His stories have been adapted into the Hulu limited series Monsterland and the film Wounds. He lives in Asheville, NC.