Hails, Tenebrous Cult!
It takes three to establish a pattern, and one of the patterns we’re establishing is this: the BRAVE NEW WEIRD calendar year is about thirteen-and-five-eighths months long, as opposed to the standard-issue twelve-month Gregorian calendar.
And why wouldn’t this be the case, when you think about it? Time is Weird™. Also, we don’t ever wanna cut corners or shirk in our duties of showing you the most accurate cross-section of Weird Fiction circa 2025; every story submitted deserves our full attention, regardless of timeline. This forthcoming volume is the culmination of an entire year’s worth of Weird, and boy howdy this year has been Weird. Have I said “Weird” enough this paragraph? I need an editor.
Weird Weird Weird.
(…also, this little ramble feels suspiciously similar to what I said last year around this time. I hate to burst your bubble, Cultists, but I think the forecast is nothing-but-Weird-years for the time being.)
Regardless: we’re gonna focus on the good kinda Weird. and to that end, it’s time to announce the…
BRAVE NEW WEIRD VOLUME THREE SHORTLIST!
As usual, it was agonizing just to narrow this list down to sixty worthy contenders from the nearly 1,000 submissions we worked through. And it’s gonna be agony to further sculpt a final Table of Contents from this list.
A couple points of note that Alex wanted me to stress:
Additional categories like anthology, special issue, games, etc. are still going to receive awards, they're just not shortlisted and will go straight to the final round. Those announcements will be made soon-ish.
We mean this very seriously: not being mentioned is not an indicator that your work isn't good enough. We understand that awards can feel exclusionary, but what we're doing here is only attempting to showcase a range of what was published over the past year that fits into our vision for our genre and voice. This is a selection of stories we chose to showcase; there are many amazing stories we couldn't, largely because of genre fit and space. Those stories are worthwhile too and we hope more and more spaces will choose to do showcases like this one (equitably, openly, and without using it as a platform to champion themselves and their own work, there's plenty of that already going around).
Okay, enough from both of us.
The BRAVE NEW WEIRD SHORTLIST:
Ainsley Hawthorn - Big Cats of Newfoundland
Aleksandra Ugelstad Elnæs - Spolia
Alex Fox - The City of Cities, Inverted; A Shadow Cast By Many Hands
Angela Liu - A Contract of Ink and Skin
Ann LeBlanc - Memories Held Against a Hungry Mouth
Avra Margariti - Unbirthday Means You Wish Yourself Unborn
Azure Arther - Reciprocity
Briar Ripley Page - Birth Of a Sucker
Calla Eris Orion - Kiss of a Toad
Casey Lawrence - Ten Things I Have Learned About Human Skin: A Presentation
[sarah] Cavar - Mad Studies
Dane Erbach - Something Else
David Corse - The Amassing Man
E.G. Condé - Sibilance
E.M. Linden - Mangrove Daughter
Elad Haber - End of Line
Elana Gomel - Mother Black Hole
Eleanna Castroianni - Zarghána
Emma Burnett - Plastic-eating fungus caused doomsday[2][3]
Emma E. Murray - An Angel of God
Emmett Nahil - Vining
Erik McHatton - The Man Who Collected Ligotti
F. J. Bergmann - The Museum of Etymology
Faith Allington - Teacakes for Foxes
Guan Un - Painted Surfaces
Hannah Greer - To Be Human
Ira Rat - Soft
Jack Klausner - Cardboard Faces
Jack Lennon - The Scottish Welfare Fund Application Form
James Cato - Wonders of a Plastic Ocean
Jes Malitoris - The House of Coiled Earth
Jess Elizabeth Reed - The Belly
K. A. Roy - Welcome to Rebirth Grove
K.A. Wiggins - The Tangle (Did Not Kill Kitsault)
Kay Vaindal - Pig House
Kelsea Yu - Creature
Lena Ng - The Halloween Horror Show
Leo Oliveira - They Remember Faces
Leslie What - Wayback
Lor Gislason - fumes
Lucas Yao-Bendimerad - So Dramatic
M. L. Krishnan - Measurements Expressed as Units of Separation
Madalena Daleziou - Hauntless House
Matthew Mitchell - Knight Rumors
Nayt Rundquist - Flashes of Neverwhen
O F Cieri - The Tragedy Brotherhood
Plangdi Neple - Not All Your Bones Are Yours
Raluca Balasa - Cogs in the (War) Machine
Ryan T. Jenkins - The Potato Problem
Samir Sirk Morató - EGREGORE
Shantell Powell - The Snow Hath No Queen
Sharang Biswas - Waiting for Jonah
SJ Townend- I HAVE SEEN SEVEN BAD THINGS
Sonya Vatomsky - The Yolo Wallpaper
Susan L. Lin - Gravitational Pull
Tehnuka - You Can Leave Your Helmet On
Tiffany Michelle Brown - Full Immersion
Tim Pratt - The Liminal Space Dating Agency
Timaeus Bloom - Memorabilia
Zoe Kaplan - Travelling Salesman
Congratulations to everyone on this list, and a heartfelt, exhausted thank you to everyone who submitted, on their own behalf, or on behalf of their peers.
We’ll announce the final Table of Contents shortly-ish; sometime before Release Day**, I can safely say, because we haven’t figured out how to manipulate time any further than that.
**currently scheduled for June 10th, though I’ve grown slightly smarter; enough to leave us a few weeks of flexibility around this particular book, because I know how much it kicks both my and Alex’s ass. In the most rewarding way.
Hail the Weird!