Welcome back, readers! Weirdfictionreview.com has been on hiatus the past few weeks so the staff and contributors can rest up from a very busy, but very fulfilling, 2013. Last year, of course, WFR.com was up for a World Fantasy Award in the Special Award – Non-Professional category. That award ultimately went to S.T. Joshi for his Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction Vols. 1 & 2 (PS Publishing). Nevertheless, it was a privilege to be nominated in the first place, and especially to be considered for the award among other amazing projects.
We carried out a few immense projects of our own this year, the biggest of which was likely our full serialization of Michael Cisco’s magnificent novel The Divinity Student, which is still available on this site. Cisco himself, however, was responsible for one of two original, never-before-seen translations of fiction we published this year, a selection of stories by Mexican writer Carlos Diaz Dufoo.
Our other original translation this year is a must-read, for those who may have missed it: Leonid Andreyev’s “He,” translated for WFR by Vlad Zhenevsky. This story was a high-water point for a year packed with great material, a real find for readers who love unsettling, psychologically-probing weird fiction.
This was a great year for us on fiction in general, starting with our reprint of Amos Tutuola’s story “Ajantala, the Noxious Guest” and ending with “The Trepanist,” an exclusive excerpt from Leena Krohn’s short novel Datura. In between, we reprinted stories from a horde of great writers: Helen Marshall, Nathan Ballingrud, K.J. Bishop, John Kessel, Kit Reed, Nike Sulway, Marc Laidlaw, and many others. And in many cases, I was able to interview these authors and ask them about their work, their thoughts on weird fiction, and many other things, which is always a rewarding experience.
Our regular columnists and contributors had a banner year in 2013. Edward Gauvin’s translation of Jean Ferry’s short story collection The Conductor and Other Tales saw publication by Wakefield Press, for instance, while Nancy Hightower’s novel Elementari Rising was published in a variety of formats by Pink Narcissus Press. Despite being busy with these projects, though, they produced their usual high quality columns on translated weird fiction and weird art throughout the year. Matthew Pridham had a great year reviewing weird film, and Maureen Kincaid Speller ably reviewed a slew of weird books and introduced readers (and myself) to reading they may not have encountered without her help. 2013 also saw the addition of a new art columnist, Katie Lavers, who has written quality articles for us and, we hope, will continue to do so through this year.
2013 was also a banner year for our ongoing 101 Weird Writers feature. An array of amazing writers were profiled by a fantastic batch of contributors, including James Machin, Leif-Schenstead Harris, Desirina Boskovich, Elwin Cotman, Timothy Jarvis, Larry Nolen, Sofia Samatar, Alistair Rennie, and Kat Clay. I sincerely hope to see the return of all these contributors for more quality writing in the coming year.
We’re all looking forward to another great year here at WFR.com, and we hope you are too. So, stay tuned for more great reading to come very soon!