By Mary Ann Zehr, contributor
A monthly column by a local teacher and reader about connecting with books and taking in Harrisonburg’s literary scene.
~ Shenandoah Fantastic: Mystic Whispers from the Valley’s Vales. Edited by James Blakey and Catherine Simpson. Whitaker Lyon Press, 2025. ~
Writing this monthly column about local authors is changing my reading dispositions. I’m increasingly reading speculative fiction because the Shenandoah Valley has so many writers who work in this genre.
For “speculative fiction,” I’m using a definition by Oxford University Press, which says it is “a super category for all genres that deliberately depart from imitating ‘consensus reality’ of everyday experience.” Speculative fiction includes fantasy, science fiction, horror, dystopia, and ghost stories, according to the definition.
Two speculative-fiction novelists, Keith Miller and Sofia Samatar, are a Harrisonburg literary power couple. I reviewed a captivating dark fairy tale, The Witch’s Journey, by Miller for this column in 2025. Samatar’s futuristic fable, The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, was selected by The New York Times as one of the ”100 Notable Books of 2024.”
Also, emerging local writers are drawing me in with humor and playfulness in speculative short stories.
A mover and shaker in the local community of speculative fiction writers is James Blakey, who lives in Broadway, Virginia. Blakey has published stories in numerous literary magazines. He published his debut novel, Superstition, in 2024 with City Owl Press. In the novel, students of the fictitious Van Buren University encounter paranormal phenomena. Blakey teamed up with Catherine Simpson, a writer based in Charlottesville, Virginia, to edit Charlottesville Fantastic: Arcane Echoes from Virginia’s Heartland. It’s a collection of 12 tales published in 2024 by the press that Blakey owns, Whitaker Lyon Press.
Now Blakey and Simpson have collaborated to edit and publish Shenandoah Fantastic: Mystic Whispers from the Valley’s Vales. This new anthology from Whitaker Lyon Press will be launched in February with an event at Parentheses Books, Harrisonburg’s independent bookstore.
I read Shenandoah Fantastic over the holidays, and it was a lark.
It’s entertaining to see how places I have visited dozens or even hundreds of times are settings for short stories in the book. The fantastical spin on familiar places is amusing and triggers my imagination.
In real life, I’ve seen a flock of ruffed grouses fly at breakneck speed away from me after I startled them while hiking in Luray, Virginia. But I didn’t imagine that ruffed grouses might start a revolution among chickens in Shenandoah Valley hatcheries as they do in “Free Birds of Singers Glen,” by Ginger Grouse.
Likewise, when I took friends on a tour of Luray Caverns, I didn’t imagine that trolls who are thousands of years old might dwell in caves hidden from tourists who stream through the well-lit rooms of the caverns. In Rodman’s story, “The Long Walk,” trolls linger in the shadows, bragging about slaughtering mammoths and such. One troll boasts that he killed a mammoth “with me bare hands.” The troll adds that he “punched its skull to bits and scooped out the brain!”
I’ve wandered on the brick sidewalks of Staunton to browse in gift stores, a clothing consignment shop, and bookshops. However, I never considered how a thriving night market with fantastical creatures as vendors could exist in the liminal spaces of the town. When a clock strikes 13, a student from Mary Baldwin University stumbles on a night market staffed by a dragon and other mythical creatures and talking animals while looking for her lost cat in E.G. Reger’s story, “The Hunt for Monty Glassman.”
In another story, “The Train to Mount Jackson,” by Julie Cline, train stops that have long been defunct, such as one in Woodstock, Virginia, are temporarily functional for a character who happens to possess a magical ticket.
Blakey contributed a short story, “The Battle of Route 42,” with magical realism that delighted me because the story is set at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), where I teach writing. The story takes place mostly in the Yoder Arena, where I have cheered for the Royals during volleyball and basketball games, and Nininger Hall, Bridgewater College’s sports arena.
In the story, Blakey reports plays in Division III women’s volleyball games with the eye of a sportswriter. He uses the competitive spirit between EMU and Bridgewater College when it comes to athletics–a true rivalry in this region–to create the story’s conflict. The trajectory of the story is realistic except for a few moments in which it is not. These moments in a magical time gap open up opportunities for a Royals player in a game against Bridgewater to influence the outcome.
In Blakey’s story, realistic fiction seamlessly morphs into speculative fiction. Even the characters have trouble sorting out what is real and what is not.
What exactly happened? The characters–and the readers–can only speculate.
Parentheses Books will host a book launch for Shenandoah Fantastic at 4 pm on Saturday, February 7. The bookstore is located at 76 W. Gay Street in Harrisonburg.
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