Submissions are open for BRAVE NEW WEIRD Vol. Five (+ cover art reveal!)

REMINDER: THIS IS FOR ELIGIBLE REPRINTS ONLY

cover art by Matt Blairstone

Tenebrous Press presents the Fifth Annual Brave New Weird Awards—to reward and promote this unique blend of genres—and its accompanying anthology, Brave New Weird: the Best New Weird Horror (+ More) Vol. 5.

We define New Weird Horror as a subgenre focused on progress, creatively capturing themes and questions that bleed into fiction straight from the modern reader's life and future. It acts as a challenge to break new ground in terms of form and content and to engage with the unknown. Beyond that, New Weird Horror will be defined by the winning pieces themselves.

Buzzwords: speculative; eclectic; horror-centric but genre-blended; progressive and innovative in terms of content, social themes, form, or voice; concept-driven.

Does this sound like your writing? Submit your previously published work to the New Weird Horror Awards today!

ELIGIBILITY

Any previously published piece of short fiction under 7.499 words originally published in the English language within the eligibility period.

You may submit NARRATIVE poems only; poems will be judged on their storytelling.

Stories published in other languages are welcome if there is an English translation available, and the English translation falls under the eligibility period.

Any work published through Tenebrous Press is not eligible. We already think you're awesome, regardless. Tenebrous staff are also not eligible.

THE PREVIOUS YEAR’S WINNERS (Volume Four, in this case) are NOT eligible; please do not submit. Anyone published in BRAVE NEW WEIRD before last year’s volume is eligible.

NOMINEES from previous years ARE eligible.

ELIGIBILITY PERIOD

Works published between the 31st of October 2025 and the 31st of October 2026 will be considered for BNW Vol. 5.

Simply: If it's published before Halloween this year, it competes for this year's award. If it's published after Halloween, it competes for next year's award.

Final submission deadline for this year's award: November 1st, 2026. Send ARCS if necessary to get the submission in on time.

RESPONSE

As this is an award, there will not be any rejection notices. Stories are submitted by editors, readers, reviewers; imagine sending rejection letters to someone who didn’t even submit their own work.

Instead, if we want to award & feature a story, we will reach out to the author. There will be a published shortlist, and the shortlisted works that don’t end up being featured will still be mentioned & advertised in the anthology.

RESULTS

Selected authors will be asked to sign a non-exclusive contract allowing their reprint to be featured.

A reprint payment of $25 + one paperback copy + one award certificate will be given to the selected authors.

HOW TO SUBMIT

ANYONE may submit. Readers, reviewers, editors, and the authors themselves are all welcome to submit.

Authors submitting on your own behalf: Submit a short story as a text document. Add the link if the story is available online. Authors, please submit ONLY ONE STORY.

Editors, reviewers, and readers submitting on behalf of others: please submit up to THREE individual stories.

For full issues/full anthologies/full collections, type them into the relevant field of the form.

Electronic submissions only.

SUBMIT HERE. 

OTHER RULES

You may speak about this award, submitting to this award, and being shortlisted for this award, in any way you like.

If we missed anything, drop us an email or DM!

YOUR BODY IS A FEVER DREAM Table of Contents Announced

Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!

We’re positively honored to reveal the full table of contents to YOUR BODY IS A FEVER DREAM, a Cosmic Body Horror anthology by trans and gender nonconforming creators.

The spiritual sequel to 2022's wildly successful and acclaimed YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY is available to preorder now!

It takes forty-plus creators to weave a Cosmic Horror anthology Weird enough for the Tenebrous faithful, but you can rest assured this one will take you to galaxies you've never imagined. 

Proceeds from YOUR BODY IS A FEVER DREAM will go to the Trans Legal Services Network and Trans Doe Task Force.

Table of Contents:

Acantholichen x variifolius - what spectrum unfurls (beyond)

Alex Hera - Tape Experience

Ariel Marken Jack - Pin Feathers

Ashe Thurman - Pareidolia

Avi Burton - In Space No One Can Hear You Cum

Bitter Karella - We Are the Devil in the Body and Mind of a Young Woman

Dave V. Riser - EAT OR GET EATEN, BABY: A Two Page RPG Horrormance

Elena Sichrovsky - It Is No Longer Enough To Die For Love

Emilija Vavic - TRANS-ASCENDANT

Esther Alter - Triangle Simulacrum

Faye Hopper - Silence (Screaming)

Lauren Coffin - Please

Gabrielle Bleu - Light Amidst The Plains

H. Marin - Devotional for the Starved

Ri Stypula - Songs for Solar-Powered Cowboys

Helen Whistberry - I Am Become A Cathedral

Jackie Marley - The Dark Pouch

Jef Rouner - You Are Already Well

Jordan Kurella - All Her Rows of Teeth

Lyd Low - She Calls Me Love

Xosh M. Belanger - Feast of Saints

Maxim Volk - I Sing the Body Celestial

Morgan Wodring - Hatred Enthrones Me

Prae Obscura - Change

Theresa Jean Tanenbaum - With all due credit to Kafka, etc.

Wren Hearn - Contingency Protocols

Ziggy Schutz - we'll grow fast like weeds, baby

Cover art by Morgan G. Robles.

Featuring illustrations by:

Bev Litkin

Casper Symons

Chris!

Genesis

Niq

Helen Whistberry

K. Brown

KJ Martinet

Lillian Hochwender

Mariah Southworth

Xeni Flowers

Yomi Torrens

Edited by Alex Woodroe.

YOUR BODY IS A FEVER DREAM is out October 6, 2026, and is available to preorder now via our webstore.

Preorder YOUR BODY IS A FEVER DREAM here.

BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror + More, Vol. 4, Table of Contents!

The Weird Fiction scene is as healthy now as it's ever been, and I think this collection—our fourth!—might have the broadest appeal yet. Much as Tenebrous continues to evolve, so has our selections process, embracing both material that blows a knowing kiss to convention, as well as some of the most outré stories being told today, whatthefuckery that experiments with both form and subject matter. I can confidently say there's something here for everyone...as long as you like it Weird.

Without further ado, please put your hands, feet and tentacles together for 2025's BRAVE NEW WEIRD Award Winners:

Z.D. Dochterman - Avila Beach

Wen Wen Yang - Drought's Vengeance

Chris Scott - The Sunflower Farmer

D. Marmara - In the Amygdala of the Beholder

Wailana Kalama - The Lazarus Ruins

Alexander James - Silver Wires & Sweet Water

Andrew Rivas - THE GOOPY LIL GUYS GO VIRAL

Biscuit Starberry - You Are Going to Die

Juleigh Howard-Hobson - Death Doesn't Sound Like It Looks

Audrey Zhou - Two’s Company, Three Might Be A Sign of Demonic Possession

Corrie Haldane - Hivemind

Ashley Stokes - Orange Slab

David Luntz - Brief Interlude with the Night Hag

Caleb Bethea - Glitter in Your Eyes

A.L. Goldfuss - Drosera regina

Zebulon Horse The Mascot's Head

Daniel Loring Keating - Letter of Apology from Eldritch Appliances, LLC

Alistair Rey - Leviathan’s Womb

TJ Price - Exhibits…

Toshiya Kamei - Sworn Brothers 

Patrick Malka - What We Remember, What We Pass Down

Morgan Melhuish - A Fragment of the Heart of Sappho

Caroline Hung - Ticket po mamser.

Congratulations to the Weirdo Class of 2025!

And to celebrate, you can save 20% on print copies of last year's BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror (+ More) Volume Three!

Announcing the Shortlist for BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror + More, Vol. 4

cover art by Matt Blairstone

It's that wonderful time again.

In our first three years of publishing a Best New Weird Horror anthology, Alex and I were pretty devil-may-care, free-wheeling, anything-goes, shoot-all-your-shots with the submissions process:

Authors, send us your five—fuck it, seven or eight—top stories! Nominate your friends! Your enemies! Here, scribble your story on this blank spot on my t-shirt, I'll read it off paired mirrors when I get home! No, putting your own name on your manuscript isn't necessary, helpful sure, but not necessary!

And that worked—well, it worked lunatically. But I mean, we're both a little insane and a lot devoted to remaining as accessible as possible. This year we put a few common-sense guardrails on subbing—while still encouraging everyone and anyone to make recommendations for anything that fits the guidelines—and you still provided. In the order of many hundreds.

From that heap of glorious, wonderful, wild Weird, we are honored to present to you...

...The 2025 BRAVE NEW WEIRD Shortlist

(in alphabetical order)

A. L. Munson We Told You of the One Who Lives in the Mound

A.L. Goldfuss Drosera regina

Addison Smith Those Perfect Materials

Akis Linardos Up His Arm Crawls a Tooth-sized Spider

Alex Tucker Blue Hole

Alexander James Silver Wires & Sweet Water

Alistair Rey Leviathan’s Womb

Amabilis O'Hara A Sign Hangs From My Hunger

Andrew Humphrey Dark Water

Andrew Kozma The Only Good Billionaire

Andrew Rivas THE GOOPY LIL GUYS GO VIRAL

Angela Sylvaine #blessed

Ash Huang Safe Face

Ashley Stokes Orange Slab

Audrey Zhou Two’s Company, Three Might Be A Sign of Demonic Possession

Ben Tufnell Bosch

Benjamin Larned That Red Hot Beat

Beth Goder Mirror-hole

Biscuit Starberry You Are Going to Die

Caleb Bethea Glitter in Your Eyes

Caroline Hung Ticket po mamser.

Cassiopeia Gatmaitan Maiden, Monster, Muse

Chase Anderson Space is Full of Ghosts (and I fucking hate it here)

Chris Scott The Sunflower Farmer

Chris Sumberg There's Lobster in Heaven!

Chris W. McGuinness Tract 16

Colin Hinckley The Roots Run Deep, It Blooms Like a Flower

Corrie Haldane Hivemind

D. Marmara In the Amygdala of the Beholder

Dane Erbach That Night

Daniel Loring Keating Letter of Apology from Eldritch Appliances, LLC

David Corse All My Angry Selves 

David Luntz Brief Interlude with the Night Hag

Diana Dima Logoptera

Drew Broussard Almost Everything He Dreamed

Jennifer Hudak The Colonists

Juleigh Howard-Hobson Death Doesn't Sound Like It Looks

Kawai Shen The Doll's Boy

Kelsea Yu Deliquescence

Lisa Cai Margery Lung Is Unstoppable

Lyndsie Manusos Proscenium

Mary Kuryla Wig

Maura Yzmore She Giggled, Slippery In My Arms

Morgan Chalfant D'rix

Morgan Melhuish A Fragment of the Heart of Sappho

Nemo Arator Midnight Surgery

Patrick Malka What We Remember, What We Pass Down

Rain Corbyn Haute

Steven Patchett Bob's Machine 

T.L. Bodine Cowbirds

TJ Price Exhibits...

Tom W. Raymond PIAMF

Toshiya Kamei Sworn Brothers 

Trevor James Zaple What Comes On The West Wind

V. H. Chen Eleven Songs For Another Lover

Wailana Kalama The Lazarus Ruins

Wen Wen Yang Drought's Vengeance

William Shaw The Universe’s Best Erotic Writing, Volume 1: A Book Review by Ian Harrison

Wyatt Robinette Nothing Extreme, Please

Z.D. Dochterman Avila Beach

Zebulon Horse The Mascot's Head

Everyone on this list is now a BNW-nominated author with a BNW-nominated story. All nominees will receive a shout-out in the anthology, and the winners will be notified for further details within a few weeks, with a tentative anthology release scheduled for late June.

Congratulations to all the fabulous creators on this list, and thank you to everyone who submitted. We still have our work cut out for us, compiling the leanest, meanest, Weirdest 70,000-ish words that we can from the above.

Editor's note:

If a name isn't on the list and you feel any sort of way about it, be it yours or someone else's, you're probably righter than we are!

As much as we (collective, editors doing best-of anthologies) try to market them as the 'best' works, that's a loose marketing term and largely only exists because 'the ones we happened to vibe with most and thought were a nice broad showcase, because really there's no such thing as objectively best or even objectively better stories of the year anthology' would have been a cumbersome title.

Any piece not being present is not an indication that it isn't good enough, or Weird enough. If there were such a thing as best and Weirdest, we would all be publishing the same twenty stories, and much as there are people out there who believe that's an acceptable practice, that's not us.

One of our favourite people in publishing is Michael Kelly of Undertow Publications, who curates Best Weird Fiction of the Year, and watching the broad range and variety in his choices, as well as how different they are from ours, is always a joy. That should be more than ample proof that Weird is, largely, in the eye of the Weirdo, and 'best' is how we get authors in front of readers, not an exclusion of everyone else.

TL;DR: We're sorry we can't scream about all of what we receive, and then some. There is so much magnificent work out there, and there should be more people screaming about it.