You know the story. Little girl goes through the woods to her grandmother’s house. Little girl is stalked by ravenous wolf. Big bad wolf gets to the house first, eats grandma. Wolf gets in bed with girl, then eats her. This would be the Little Red Riding Hood of Charles Perrault (who published it as […]
“Noël Devaulx is the secret master of the 20th century French fantastic,” I wrote in 2009. And by that I meant in letters, in essays, in interviews, in conversation, he was the name on everyone’s lips, everyone I was reading and researching. Scratch a French fantasist, find a reference to the former Breton engineer, René Forgeot, whose pseudonym had been […]
Will Ludwigsen’s fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, and many other magazines. His first collection of short fiction, Cthulhu Fhtagn, Baby! and Other Cosmic Insolence, appeared in 2007. A 2011 MFA graduate from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program in popular fiction, he teaches creative writing at […]
This post is part of an ongoing series on 101 weird writers featured in The Weird compendium, the anthology that serves as the inspiration for this site. There is no ranking system; the order is determined by the schedule of posts. Caitlín R. Kiernan (1964 — ) is an American author who has steadily moved beyond a reputation as an heir […]
Psychedelic, hypnotic, and with an obsessive quality about them which moves them well into the territory of the weird, Jake Fried’s animations are self-consciously retro, or as he himself describes them ‘retro-futurist.’ In his latest project, The Deep End, this retro feel is initiated by the soundtrack of static from an old record, and then […]
“We must refuse madness,” writes Marguerite Cassan at the end of “On the Line,” one of nine stories in Develop in Darkness (À développer dans l’obscurité, Laffont, 1967), and this tension between refusal and embrace, suspicion and abandon, fuels much of the book’s conflict, dividing those whom darkness touches from those who tell their tales. Little […]
Aurora-winning poet Helen Marshall is an author, editor, and bibliophile. Her poetry and fiction have been published in The Chiaroscuro, Paper Crow, Abyss & Apex, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Tor.com. She recently released a collection of poems entitled Skeleton Leaves from Kelp Queen Press and her collection of short stories Hair Side, Flesh Side was released […]
This post is part of an ongoing series on 101 weird writers featured in The Weird compendium, the anthology that serves as the inspiration for this site. There is no ranking system; the order is determined by the schedule of posts. Jamaica Kincaid (1949 — ) is a critically acclaimed Caribbean writer living in the United States. Her stories have appeared in […]
Few writers have been as frequently misunderstood and mislabelled as Nikolai Gogol (1809−1852). Ever since he came to prominence in czarist Russia of the 1830s, various groups and critics have recruited him as a foot-soldier for their own particular battles, and he has proven most useful for these extra-literary machinations. This is why Gogol has been […]
Though Jean Ferry (1906−1974) primarily made his living as a screenwriter, he was involved in many notable movements of 20th century French literature. He was a satrap of the College of ‘Pataphysics, an Oulipo guest of honor, and the greatest specialist of his day in the works of Proust’s eccentric neighbor and cult figure, Raymond Roussel. As […]