TRICKSTER STORIES

Full of eccentric, captivating, and subversive tales, Trickster Stories displays the wit and eloquence of storyteller Stephen Silke. In a fresh voice, Silke shares various incarnations of the Trickster in human form. The Trickster is not someone to mess around with, although he (or sometimes she) does do hilarious things. He’s crafty and he inspires sympathy, and with him everything is personal.


These nine short stories create what can be a bleak and harsh world, where unexplained events are commonplace—where humor, love and community are upended. In his note to the reader, Silke describes the rationale for his short story book and recasts the Trickster as a myth-maker in human form rather than his traditional Native American incarnation as rabbit or coyote. New York Times Best-Selling Author Judith Freeman provides an introduction.


The Trickster walks Silke’s world in multiple modes, as a Latino drifter, a Catholic missionary, a Native American idler, and a German schoolboy, among others. Silke explores fear, morality and unexpected consequences above all else.


“If, as Silke has written, the Trickster’s only true purpose is '"as a means to reassessment,'" then these stories offer us that possibility, the freedom engendered by unfettered and unlimited imagination . . . part of the pleasure of reading Trickster Stories is that for one brief moment, the unsayable is given mysterious expression.”

—Judith Freeman, author of Chinchilla Farm, Red Water, and The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved.


Stephen Silke is a San Diego native. He holds a Master of Professional Writing degree from the University of Southern California and a Creative Writing MFA from San Diego State University. His fiction has been featured in decomP magazinE, Le Scat Noir, Fiction International, and Portland Review.