Third Bear Carnival: "The Surgeon's Tale" and "Three Days in a Border Town"
When deciding on whom to invite for the Third Bear Carnival , one person I knew I really hoped to convince to join us was Micaela Morrissette, because Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer, and I had become aware of her short fiction at the same time -- when we read her story "Ave Maria" in Conjunctions 49 and immediately decided to reprint it for Best American Fantasy 2 . (We weren't alone in loving the story -- it won a Pushcart Prize , too!) She has since gone on to all sorts of wonderful things, including publishing an acclaimed story in Weird Tales , "Wendigo" . My first encounter with Micaela, though, had been way back in 2005 when my story " The Art of Comedy" appeared on Web Conjunctions and Micaela helped with the layout and formatting. And now, with Micaela writing about two of Jeff's stories, it feels like we've all come full circle! But more importantly, here are some wonderful, and wonderfully-written, insights on Jeff's work...