Steven Millhauser

Thanks to a few short stories published in McSweeney's Quarterly, I've lately gotten into the writings of Steven Millhauser.  He's written many short story collections over the years, and has a really unique style, categorized as magic realism.  Some of his subjects include: a painter whose works come to life, an underground world in an ordinary town, children flying on carpets, and a city obsessed with miniature automatons.  What I love about his stories is the way he can describe these imagined places, people, and things with so much care and detail that I hardly notice I'm reading fiction at all.  Here's my favorite collection of his stories: The Knife Thrower and other Stories