Flint author Connor Coyne to launch new dark fairy tale collection at Totem Books

FLINT, Michigan — Award-winning Flint author Connor Coyne released Unseelie Stories from a Living City, a new collection of dark fairy tales, folktales, jokes, riddles, curses, and urban legends, through Gothic Funk Press on June 21.

The book includes 48 stories set in Akawe, Michigan, the haunted auto town at the center of Coyne’s four-volume Urbantasm series. The collection can be read as a stand-alone book or as an appendix to the larger Urbantasm saga.

The stories reimagine fairy and folktale traditions through a Rust Belt landscape of rail crossings, shuttered schools, vacant lots, factories, diners, expressways, creeks, and neighborhoods shaped by memory.

Coyne will celebrate the release with a launch event from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 27, at Totem Books, located at 620 W. Court St. in Flint. The free event will include a reading, a book signing, books for sale, light refreshments, and a celebration of Akawe folklore.

“People tell stories about the things they care about,” Coyne said. “These are the stories, some of them true, others a bit sideways to the facts, that animate the people of Akawe.”

Coyne is the director of Flint-based Gothic Funk Press and teaches writing to youth and adults at the Gloria Coles Flint Public Library and the Flint Institute of Arts.

You can purchase this and Coyne’s other books at urbantasm.com or connorcoyne.com