Lives of Eminent Sorcerers

An ensorcelling collection of fantastical stories within an encyclopedia frame narrative.

Lives of Eminent Sorcerers: And Other Readings is an ensorcelling collection of literary ephemera that encompasses the history of ideas of an alternate world in the tradition of Ursula K. LeGuin and Clark Ashton Smith. Drawing from history, religion, philosophy, and myth, Ed Halter assembles an encyclopedia story cycle that places the reader as a participant of voyages across endless oceans and pilgrimages to lost temples, as well as a witness to incantatory miracles and hidden rituals.Ed Halter is a writer and curator living in New York City, and a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for cinema in all its forms. His publications include From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games (2006), Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the 21st Century (2015, with Lauren Cornell), From the Third Eye: The Evergreen Review Film Reader (2018, with Barney Rosset) and over two decades of writing for 4Columns, Artforum, The Believer, Bookforum, Cinema Scope, The Criterion Collection, frieze, Little Joe, Mousse, The New Yorker, Rhizome, Triple Canopy, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. He has taught at Bard College since 2005, where he is currently Critic in Residence.