Ben Loory is an American short story writer. His first book, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day (Penguin 2011), was a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program, and was named one of the 10 Best Fiction Books of the Year by Hudson Booksellers. His second book, Tales of Falling and Flying (Penguin 2017), was named a Favorite Book of the Year by the staff of The Paris Review, and one of the 50 Best Fantasy Books of All Time by Esquire Magazine. Loory’s fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker, Fairy Tale Review, BOMB Magazine, and A Public Space, been heard on This American Life and Selected Shorts, and been anthologized in Tiny Nightmares, Gigantic Worlds, The New Voices of Fantasy, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction Vol. 5. They have also been adapted to short film, live theater, chamber music, and dance, and been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, and Indonesian. Loory is a graduate of Harvard University and holds an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute. He is also the author of a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus (Dial Books for Young Readers 2015). He lives and teaches short story writing in Los Angeles.
There once was a man with a hand of gold. He was the pride of his town. When he walked down the street, all the people would stop and stare. There goes the man with the hand of gold, they’d say. And the man with the hand of gold would always see them seeing him, […]