What’s a Phorlam? Wofford College’s Shared Worlds: A fantastic bestiary

Shared Worlds is a summer writing program for teens offered by Wofford college. Cue description!

“The faculty of Shared Worlds creative writing camp has called on some of speculative fiction’s most compelling storytellers to chase down and gather up all manner of wondrous beasts. Scroll through our Fantastic Bestiary and don’t forget to return in August when the students of Shared Worlds 2010 have illustrated entries with original artwork, and included their own thoughts on these beasts.”

The shared worlds faculty have collected an impressive list of beasties from a veritable slew of cool writers: Michael Bishop, Marly Youmans, Cory Doctorow, Kathe Koja, Liz Hand, Lev Grossman, and more, including little old me. My contribution is the Phorlam.

“Fully grown, the Phorlam is three to five feet long (with two feet of that length belonging to its thin prehensile tail) and weighs almost forty pounds. Squat and low to the ground, the Phorlam is four-legged although it almost has no forelegs to speak of.” clicky to read more of the Phorlam’s majesty and mystery!

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Tuesday’s Monster: Spiders!

Wednesday, June 27, 1934

“Huge poisonous spiders were lately invading the town of Antofagasta, in Chile. They are attacking inhabitants.”

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Why the Creature! blog? Plus Tuesday’s Monster

Good question. Over the coming months, John Langan and I hope to post on all things monsters, fact and fiction. We’ll have some guest posts. And as we flesh out the TOC of our anthology, we’ll announce the contributors and their stories.

For today, here’s Tuesday’s monster. The “Muck Monster.”

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