Sharang Biswas is an NYC-based writer, artist, and award-winning game designer. He has won IndieCade, ENNIE, and IGDN awards for his games and has showcased interactive works at numerous galleries, museums, and festivals, including Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. His nonfiction writing has appeared in publications such as Dicebreaker, Eurogamer, Unwinnable, and First Person Scholar, while his fiction & poetry has been published by Fantasy, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Nightmare, Augur, Baffling and more. His short stories have been selected for two editions of the annual We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction and his first book The Iron Below Remembers released in Spring 2025 from Neon Hemlock Press.
His BNW-winning story, “Waiting for Jonah”, originally appeared in Nightmare Magazine.
BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror + More, Vol. 3, is out June 24th.
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Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-winning story.
Jonah. Smart, handsome, ambitious Jonah. You wanted to be his friend. You wanted to be him. You wanted him.
The weird book he found didn't change things.
Grotesque occurrences at school didn't change things.
What would it take to change things?
This world is friggin' Weird in a lot of ways right now, and many of those ways are not the fun kind. What secret tips can you share to help others navigate this mess on a daily basis?
Arrange more phone-dates with friends: socializing keeps us sane.
Eat more kimchi/miso or other probiotics: gut health = all health.
Support indie games or indie speculative fiction: art keeps us alive.
I am adding that second one to my daily regimen promptly. Hails, gut health!
Do you take naps?
Every single day, usually after lunch. Even when I worked in consulting, I tried to power nap in one of the conference rooms!
On the Tenebrous Discord board, we ask everyone to introduce themselves as a Film-meets-Music Artist (Citizen Kane x Metallica, f’rinstance). It doesn’t have to be your favorite, and don’t spend too much time overthinking it; now GO.
Bend It Like Beckham X Mika
What's the capital-W Weirdest thing that's ever happened to you (that you're comfortable sharing)?
I'm not really a magnet for Weirdness... The closest I can come to is a stranger on the subway chasing my friends and me between train cars, yelling at me to take the train all the way to JFK Airport for a plane back to India because, "Indians owned more slaves than anyone in history" (gentle reader, they did not).
Alas, that’s less Weird than nausea-inducing. We’re just glad you’re here making shit Weird for the rest of the world.
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BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror + More, Vol. 3, is out June 24th.
