Our audio short story this month is a modern-day fantasy by long-time Rochester-area writer, Nick DiChario.

Nick has been publishing fantasy and science fiction stories since the early 1990s in such magazines as Galaxy’s Edge, Weird Tales, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He has been nominated for both the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards and his first two novels, A Small and Remarkable Life and Valley of Day-Glo, both received nominations for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year.

“Carp Man” first appeared in The Tampa Tribune Fiction Quarterly (1998) and was collected in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection (1999). We are proud to be able to feature this story, and to have it beautifully read by actor and playwright, R. Emmett Michie.

We were also fortunate enough to have Nick in town for the rehearsal of this story, and he very generously sat down with our host, Dean Amsler, for a fun and enlightening interview afterward — be sure to check it out!

So without further ado, we hope you enjoy this short tale of love, loss, and magical realism.