Logorrhea

"Delightful . . . A treat for dictionary hounds and vocabulary-challenged word lovers everywhere."--Booklist For most of us, these prizewinning spelling bee words would be difficult to pronounce, let alone spell. We asked twenty-one of today's most talented and inventive writers to go even further and pen an original tale inspired by one of dozens of obscure and fascinating championship words. The result is Logorrhea--a veritable dictionary of the weird, the fantastic, the haunting, and the indefinable that will have you spellbound from the very first page. Including twenty-one stories and the inscrutable words that inspired them: Chiaroscuro: "The Chiaroscurist" by Hal Duncan

Lyceum: "Lyceum" by Liz Williams

Vivisepulture: "Vivisepulture" by David Prill

Eczema: "Eczema" by Clare Dudman

Sacrilege, Semaphore: "Semaphore" by Alex Irvine

Smaragdine: "The Smaragdine Knot" by Marly Youmans

Insouciant: "A Portrait in Ivory" by Michael Moorcock

Cambist: "The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics" by Daniel Abraham

Logorrhea: "Logorrhea" by Michelle Richmond

Pococurante: "Pococurante" by Anna Tambour

Autochthonous: "From Around Here" by Tim Pratt

Vignette: "Vignette" by Elizabeth Hand

Sycophant: "Plight of the Sycophant" by Alan DeNiro

Elegiacal: "The Last Elegy" by Matthew Cheney

Eudaemonic: "Eudaemonic" by Jay Caselberg

Macerate: "Softer" by Paolo Bacigalupi

Transept: "Crossing the Seven" by Jay Lake

Psoriasis: "Tsuris" by Leslie What

Euonym: "The Euonymist" by Neil Williamson

Dulcimer: "Singing of Mount Abora" by Theodora Goss

Appoggiatura: "Appoggiatura" by Jeff VanderMeer

"This book is a logophile's dream--a left-field collection of stories inspired by winning words from the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Anyone who has ever spent an hour or two happily browsing the pages of a dictionary will find something to love here."--Kevin Brockmeier, author of A Brief History of the Dead