Norman Lock has written a book-length collection of short stories called Histories of the Imagination, in which a group of adventurers which could never be set off to explore an Africa that never was in a 19th Century that no one else could dream of. To tell you more about these surreal tales would be to give away some of their plot, so you'd best just start reading. He presents six chapters of Histories of the Imagination at this web site.
Norman Lock has published fiction (or is about to) in American journals including Archipelago, The Cream City Review, Dirigible, First Intensity, The Iowa Review, The Literary Review, Literal Latte, New Letters, Nightsun, The North American Review, The Quarterly, The Paris Review, which awarded him its Aga Kahn Prize, Way Station Magazine, and Yefief. His stories have also appeared in Ambit (UK), The Barcelona Review (Spain), De Tijdlijn (Belgium), Imago (Australia), Jejune (Czech Republic), Lo Straniero (Italy), NEeuropa (Luxembourg), Paris/Atlantic (France), Rampike (Canada), and Oui.
His poetry has appeared in Big Moon, California Quarterly, Confrontation, Kayak, The Little Review, Oink!, Pig Iron, and The Painted Bride Quarterly.
His stage plays have been produced in New York (The Perry Street Theatre and The Directors Company), Chicago, Detroit (The Attic), Los Angeles, and other American cities; in Heidelberg, Hamburg, and other German cities; London (at the Old Bull); and, in 1996, at the Edindburgh Theatre Festival where The House of Correction was "arguably the best new play of the Festival." The House of Correction was voted one of the year's best by the Los Angeles Times critics in 1988 (for its Los Angeles Theater Center production) and 1994 (for its Theatre 40 revival). Lock was also script consultant for its film adaptation. The House of Correction is published by Broadway Play Publishing Company and distributed in a German-language acting edition by Per Lauke Verlag, Munich, which represents Lock's work in much of Europe.
Lock is also the author of Women in Hiding, The Shining Man, The Primate House, and Let's Make Money - all produced by WDR, Germany's largest radio broadcasting network, and a short film, "The Body Shop," produced by The American Film Institute and seen at the San Francisco and Montreal Film Festivals as well as in Los Angeles.
His concrete poetry was exhibited by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and published in its Journal. It has also appeared in Richard Kostelanetz's Assembling, in Dramatika, and Beyond Baroque.
He was a founding member of the Language Action Group, a performance art troupe in Philadephia in the 1970's.
Lock teaches literature and creative writing in a federal prison by night and is a writer for an advertising agency by day. He makes his home in the extreme southern end of New Jersey. He holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from Syracuse University. He received a 1999 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. If you'd like to contact him, about publishing Histories of the Imagination or any other issue, write to NormanGLock@cs.com. Or check out his book at the Unlikely Stories bookstore.
Norman's works here at Unlikely Stories are:
July 1999 - July 2000:
Growing Uncertainty
My Hysteria
The Sorrow of the Porters
Raising Pennington
A History of the Cinema
The Geology of Love