Many thanks to the author for kind permission to reprint this essay. It originally appeared in Collapse IV — please visit their website and consider a donation to their efforts if you enjoy this piece. — The editors The author, with skull and octopus, yesterday. 0. Prologue: the Tentacular Novum Taking for granted, as we do, its ubiquitous cultural debris, […]
The following essay focused on “The Other Side of the Mountain” contains some mild spoilers. Visit Gio Clairval’s blog for more on The Weird and a variety of other topics. The story In a story written in first person, the narrator always survives, but the beginning of this novella doesn’t bode well. Our young narrator, after an […]
WFR Editors’ Note: A version of this essay was first given as a talk by António Monteiro at a meeting in Rochester, England, October 30⁄31, 1999, and subsequently published as the introduction to The Horrifying Presence and Other Tales, published by Ex Occidente Press. We are pleased to present a version modified from both the speech and the published […]
When I was thirteen I was handed a book by a friend. The cover art was off-putting — a red ocean, a mountain in the background with a human heart at its center, the head of a statue in the foreground. I hesitated to accept it, but this friend, who wasn’t much of a reader, stared at me for a moment and said, “You’ve got to.” Now, […]
Michel Bernanos was the fourth of six children born to Georges Bernanos, the famous French Catholic writer of rural damnation. He was the only one to become a writer, though in the vein of the fantastic and often under pen names, so as not to partake unfairly of his father’s fame. At the age of 41, […]
Margo Lanagan (1960 — ) is an Australian writer primarily known for her dark fantasy short stories, some influenced by folktales. Although Lanagan had published books since 1990, she first came to the attention of readers outside of her own country with the collection Black Juice (2004), for which she won a World Fantasy Award and a Printz Honor Award. […]
WFR Editors’ Note: As readers may have noticed, this week at WFR we are very much emphasizing the more Kafkaesque strands of the weird, whether with direct descendents of Kafka like Michal Ajvaz and Leena Krohn or through direct antecedents/ contemporaries like the brilliant Alfred Kubin, who was for a time connected to Kafka’s circle of […]
(Photo credit) Michal Ajvaz (1949 -) is a brilliant Czech novelist, poet and translator. Born into an exiled Russian family, Ajvaz studied Czech studies and esthetics at Charles University in Prague. He did not begin publishing fiction until 1989, due to the political repression in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia). Ajvaz’s brand of fiction would have […]
The following general introduction by Nancy Hightower was first published in the catalog for the Cute & Creepy Show curated by Carrie Ann Baade (Florida State University). The catalog also contains Hightower’s extended exploration of specific pieces in the exhibit. Please see our other Cute & Creepy coverage this week, including a gallery, read the Curator’s Note, and visit Nancy […]
Last month something wonderful happened in Tallahassee, Florida — an event that brought together people from all walks of life and all artistic persuasions. Florida State University presented the Cute & Creepy Art Exhibit, guest curated by Carrie Ann Baade. The Opening Night was Friday, October 14, 2011. Attendees were entertained by circus acrobats while the music of […]