Bright Segments

James Sallis moves with ease among genres and modes: novels, stories, poetry, criticism, musicology, biography, translation. Best known perhaps as a crime writer—author of Drive and the six Lew Griffin novels along with others—his first acclaim came in the 1960s from groundbreaking short stories in science fiction publications like Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds, for which he served for a time as editor, and Damon Knight’s Orbit anthologies.

In years since, he’s published eighteen novels, numerous collections of essays, six volumes of poetry, a landmark biography of Chester Himes, and a translation of Raymond Queneau’s novel Saint Glinglin, while writing widely about books for The New York Times, LA Times, The Washington Post, and for The Boston Globe, where he served as books columnist. He’s received a lifetime achievement award from Bouchercon, the Hammett Award for literary excellence in crime writing, and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.

Through it all, his interest in the short story has remained strong, with work appearing regularly in venues ranging from The Georgia Review to the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Herein you’ll find science fiction, comedy low and high, fantasy, crime stories, stories of everyday life: the realist, arealist, and surreal all together in a jumble, enjambed. Literature, Jim insists, is not a cabinet with labeled drawers, it’s a banquet table. Stroll around, pick what you want from it all. What you need. Enjoy.