Local Writers, Local Stories

Michael Credico, Susan Petrone, and E. F. Schraeder

Join us on Facebook Live for a conversation with local authors Michael Credico, Susan Petrone, and E. F. Schraeder.

This event will be broadcast live at facebook.com/cuyahogalib/live. A Facebook account is not required to view the program.

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Order your copies of the authors' books from Mac’s Backs – Books on Coventry: 

The Heebie-Jeebie Girl: macsbacks.com/book/9781611882858

Heartland Calamitous: macsbacks.com/book/9781938769535

Ghastly Tales of Gaiety & Greed: Unauthorized and Haunted Cedar Point: macsbacks.com/book/9781949054248

About the authors:

Michael Credico is the author of Heartland Calamitous (Autumn House Press). His short fiction has appeared widely in print and online, including Black Warrior Review, The Collagist, Columbia Journal, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, New Ohio Review, Puerto del Sol and others. He has received an Individual Excellence Award in Literature from the Ohio Arts Council. He lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. 

A bear is adopted by the parents of the child he has just swallowed. A woman born covered in wool performs a stage act where she shears herself nude. A man builds a mobile with live animals in hopes of easing his and his wife’s anxiety. When the earth is sent hurtling through the universe, people must decide if they want to hold on or let go. The stories in Heartland Calamitous portray an absurdist vision of Ohio filled with shapeshifters, death cults, rocket ships, and fish that fly with angel wings. 

Susan Petrone has been published in such diverse outlets as Glimmer Train Stories, ESPN.com, and Belt Magazine. She is the author of The Heebie-Jeebie Girl (2020), The Super Ladies (2018), Throw Like a Woman (2015), and A Body at Rest (2009), which won a bronze medal for regional fiction from the Independent Publishers Book Awards (IPPY). She is also one of the co-founders and former president of Literary Cleveland (litcleveland.org). Susan holds a master's degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Cleveland State University and lives with one husband, one daughter, and far too many animals in a little house near some medium-sized woods.

The Heebie-Jeebie Girl takes place in Youngstown, Ohio, 1977. Between the closing of the city's largest steel mill and the worst blizzard in more than 40 years, the table is set for remarkable change. Unemployed steel worker Bobby Wayland is trying hard to help his family and still pay for his wedding, but the only solution he can think of involves breaking the law. On the other side of town, a little girl named Hope is keeping a big secret, one she won't even share with her Great Uncle Joe―she can make things move without touching them. Watching over both of them is the city herself, and she has something to say and something to do about all of this.

An admirer of strange wonders, sleights of hand, and carousels, E. F. Schraeder writes poetry and fiction that is often inspired by not quite real worlds. Schraeder's work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Pulp Modern, Mystery Weekly Magazine, and other journals and anthologies.

Coasters, carousels, an old cemetery and sprawling hotel on a stormy lakeside. Visit this haunted tour of scrapbook memories where legendary summers intersect with history and rumor. Told in vignettes that weave stories, newspaper clippings, postcards, and images, Ghastly Tales weaves the tales of four families through the decades at a lakeside resort and amusement park where everyone eventually returns.