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- The Ghettobirds
The Ghettobirds
Author: Bryant O'Hara
Imprint: Frayed Edge Press
ISBN: 9781642510355 (pbk.)
Physical description: 6x9; 85 p.
Nominated for the 2022 Elgin Award, Full-Length Book Category, from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association
The Ghettobirds presents thirty works of speculative poetry that celebrate the ability of humanity to adapt to, surpass, and possibly transcend its environment and its origins. Sprinkled throughout this Afrofuturist collection are a series of recurring characters called the Ghettobirds, cybernetic beings created out of a technological singularity event that occurs in a slum. These beings exist to help humanity change itself so that, in time, it will have the capacity to leave its home world. O’Hara works with a love of both the natural and the artificial world, and uses rhythm and cadence to compress thought into images of just how strange our experiences can become as we learn to shape—and be shaped by—both worlds.
Bryant O'Hara was born in Long Beach, California, the son of a Marine Corps technician from Heflin, Alabama and a data entry clerk from Decatur, Georgia, both of whom instilled a love of music, art, technology, and the pursuit of knowledge. He received dual degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Humanities from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1993. His poetry has been published in Pandemic Atlanta 2020, Star*Line Magazine, and Eyedrum Periodically, as well as recognized in the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Poetry Contest, long form division. Bryant is a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity and the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and is an ordained minister in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia, with his wife Alice, two out of seven children, and one out of five grandchildren.