Corey Farrenkopf

East Harwich

Writer and Editor at Freelance

Writer/Librarian. Words in @NightmareMag @TheDeadlands @StrangeHorizons @ElectricLit… Repped by @MarieLamba books: Living in Cemeteries / Haunted Ecologies

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Articles

What It Means to Be Haunted » Bridge Eight Press

2 months ago | bridgeeight.com | Corey Farrenkopf

At a party, as others sip beer around a campfire, you tell your friend he’s going to die on his motorcycle. And then he does. You can’t make the funeral because you’re in grad school hundreds of miles away, studying Education. It’s orientation week and you’re already exquisitely lost.
Drown-Haunted

Mar 21, 2025 | flashfictiononline.com | Corey Farrenkopf

My mother had a shrine to God in the basement before the flood came. Candles. Statuary. The golden tabernacle. Stained glass looked out on concrete foundation, no portal to a drier world. She’s still down there, bones picked clean by river fish, snapping turtles risen from swamps. She thought prayer would save her, an invisible, tide-halting dome cast over the house. I’ve seen her hollow, skeletal remains. A scuba mask and snorkel borrowed from a neighbor.
On The Shores of Nineveh

Dec 9, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Nnadi Samuel |Corey Farrenkopf |Michelle Koubek |Catherine Baker

gravity ropes a shark upside down as if destined for hanging. the glissading wind, scissoring mushrooms off the hard scale of its body—laid in acrobatic display. the spectacle hunts the small kingdom of man. Its practised weight, silvering the atmosphere in marigold worship. I roam the length of this world, wasteful with minutes,positioning to catch a glimpse of its dorsal fin making an ocean of air. It swam the Mississippis of its lives, indifferent to hurt.
The Universe Is Dying

Dec 9, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Michelle Koubek |Corey Farrenkopf |Nnadi Samuel |Catherine Baker

The universe is dying. I can tell by how the stars are flicking off like lightbulbs. But that’s why I’m here, electrician to the sky,R5-70, a nanobot with 3,000 siblings. We crawl through the dim space like cave explorers,poking, twisting and tightening the stars that have turned off. And as they blink back on memories scorch uslike solar flares from the Sun,burning, because the past is angry for being forgotten. Here is one, I see my daughter,chicken wing arms and jalapeno eyes.
The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry

Dec 9, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Catherine Baker |Corey Farrenkopf |Michelle Koubek |Nnadi Samuel

Beginning to read any speculative fiction story means piecing its world together from the words the author gives us, one by one. What kinds of being live here, what spaces they inhabit, what laws their physical and social worlds must follow, what common sense they have that we do not, what technologies they know and how supernatural the cosmology will be—all come piece by piece as we interpret the words. And especially the names.
A Wish for the Drowned

Dec 9, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Corey Farrenkopf

The algae-weaver jammed on the fifteenth T-shirt of the day, dried filament burning into a black amorphous blob between dozens of spinnerets. Sevvy was half-submerged in the giant engine’s control panel, plugging and unplugging countless cords that neither of us understood. The old adage of just turn it off and on again was the extent of our technical knowledge. The voice of our boss, Victar, crackled through the speakers welded to the slowly collapsing beams overhead.
A Cruise Ship for the Disappeared

Oct 16, 2024 | electricliterature.com | Preety Sidhu |Corey Farrenkopf

A Cruise Ship for the Disappeared Electric Literature Urgently Needs Your HelpFor the 15,000 people who visit our site every day, reading Electric Literature costs nothing. And yet Electric Lit is not free. We need to raise $25,000 by December 31, 2024 to keep Electric Literature going into next year. If the continued existence of Electric Literature means something to you, please make a contribution today.
Living in Cemeteries|Paperback

Apr 18, 2024 | barnesandnoble.com | Corey Farrenkopf

"The effortless world building, buoyed by Dave's confident narration, immediately immerses readers in the intense unease, carrying them to its emotional conclusion. A character-centered and thought provoking tale that is as much about embracing life as it is about death, this title will appeal to fans of Elizabeth McCracken and Neil Gaiman" -BooklistDave Gallagher mows the lawns and digs the graves at cemeteries in his hometown on Cape Cod.
Living in Cemeteries

Apr 18, 2024 | bookshop.org | Corey Farrenkopf

Description "The effortless world building, buoyed by Dave's confident narration, immediately immerses readers in the intense unease, carrying them to its emotional conclusion. A character-centered and thought provoking tale that is as much about embracing life as it is about death, this title will appeal to fans of Elizabeth McCracken and Neil Gaiman" -BooklistDave Gallagher mows the lawns and digs the graves at cemeteries in his hometown on Cape Cod.
The H Word: Walking in Cemeteries

Apr 10, 2024 | nightmare-magazine.com | Wendy Wagner |Corey Farrenkopf

Cemeteries don’t need the supernatural to terrify. Zombies and revenants aren’t required to raise gooseflesh along our necks. Ghosts don’t have to peer out from mausoleums to sink that stone of dread into our guts. King’s Pet Sematary is a great example of the fear that has been associated with graveyards in the horror genre . . . the dread of What if they come back? What if they come back, but different? This misses the true point of what is scary about cemeteries.