Ran Walker

Step into the Afroverse-a constellation of 100 microstories where Black futures, pasts, and presents collide in stunning bursts of imagination. In Fragments of the Afroverse, Ran Walker distills whole worlds into just 100 words each, weaving speculative fiction, surrealism, and cultural reflection into a tapestry of rhythm and possibility. From dreamlike scenarios to ancestral echoes, these compact narratives challenge boundaries and celebrate the richness of Black life across dimensions. Bold, inventive, and deeply human, this collection invites you to explore the vastness of the universe-one word, one story, one fragment at a time.

In this companion to Ran Walker's collection Apollo's Toy Box, Gods Among Men picks up where he left off, offering a diverse collection of 100 new pieces that further explore the juxtapositions between prose poetry and microfiction, while delving into humor, horror, race, and everything in between.

Ranging from the mundane to the magical, the humorous to the horrifying, Apollo's Toy Box blends microfiction and prose poetry seamlessly over the course of 300 original pieces and marks a masterful achievement by award-winning author Ran Walker.

In his first collection of prose poems, Ran Walker explores the island of Oʻahu in Hawaii from the perspective of a curious tourist and admirer. These fifty poems, honoring the 50th state, explore many facets of the island, while paying homage to its beauty, history, and culture.

"Cotton Candy"She loved cotton candy, the feel of the sugar tufts brushing against her skin, even the coarseness of the wet pieces that hardened into tiny bricks of sugar. The colors, pink and blue and yellow, all colors and flavors competing for attention on her palate, aroused more than her hunger.She wondered what it would feel like to wear it, to sleep on it, to have it as hair she could style. She relished this idea until she realized that people would one day want to touch and pull and squeeze her cotton candy, and she could never allow that.-----Ran Walker continues to blur the fine line between microfiction and prose poetry in this new collection of 100-word stories, spanning many different genres, yet filtered through a lens of Afrosurrealism, Afrofuturism, Afro Gothicism, satire, and humor.

With Spaceships Don't Come Equipped With Rearview Mirrors, Ran Walker returns with his second collection of one hundred 50-word stories, picking up where he left off with his first collection, The Strange Museum: 50-Word Stories. These new stories of humor, horror, science fiction, romance, literature, and poetic prose illustrate why Walker is considered a master of the form.

In this Afrosurrealistic novel conjuring the energy of Keith Knight's WOKE and Donald Glover's ATLANTA, an unemployed cartoonist must pick up the pieces of his life after a failed marriage proposal, only to find that his world has become far more absurd than anything he could have ever imagined, let alone attempted to draw. Told in chapters composed of exactly 100 words each, Black Marker is a wild ride through the amusement park of Ran Walker's imagination, a ticket worth buying.

"I'm never quite at ease in a Ran Walker story. And that's a good thing. He's a master of the 100-word form." GRANT FAULKNER, Executive Director of NaNoWriMo and Co-Founder of 100 Word Story"He's just that talented. To paraphrase Ethridge Knight: Making jazz swing in one hundred words AIN'T no square writer's job." RION AMILCAR SCOTT, award-winning author of Insurrections and The World Doesn't Require You"Ran Walker is a writer's writer." MAURICE CARLOS RUFFIN, author of The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You and We Cast a ShadowA young boy wrestles with what it means to have long hair. A woman finds herself accepting a relationship she knows is not good for her. A generation of successful graduates places greater value on materialism than love. Aliens and more aliens. Mystery. Intrigue. Love (and love lost). And, yes, Blackness. All in one hundred 100-word stories.In Ran Walker's latest collection of 100-word stories, he leaves few stones unturned as he pushes the limits of the form in engaging, surprising, and even humorous ways.Welcome to The Library of Afro Curiosities.

A young boy wrestles with what it means to have long hair. A woman finds herself accepting a relationship she knows is not good for her. A generation of successful graduates places greater value on materialism than love. Aliens and more aliens. Mystery. Intrigue. Love (and love lost). And, yes, Blackness. All in one hundred 100-word stories.In Ran Walker's latest collection of 100-word stories, he leaves few stones unturned as he pushes the limits of the form in engaging, surprising, and even humorous ways. Welcome to The Library of Afro Curiosities.