Meet the WEIRDo's: 2024 BRAVE NEW WEIRD Award Winner Ira Rat

Ira Rat works and lives in Ames, IA. He runs Filthy Loot Press who, no lie, make some of the prettiest-looking books I’ve seen.

His BNW-winning story “Soft” originally appeared in “hairs.” (also from Filthy Loot).

BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror + More, Vol. 3, is out June 24th.

You can preorder it here.

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Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-winning story.

What happens when transgressive performance art hits an economic downturn? 

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?

Turn off the news. If it's important, someone will text you.

Do you take naps?

I'm napping right now.

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.

Slime City x Kali Malone

What's the capital-W Weirdest thing that's ever happened to you (that you're comfortable sharing)?

Incredibly boring, but I saw a ghost when I was six. I woke up to a face hovering over me while I slept. Didn't even say, "Boo." 

Well that was quick! Let’s do five more:

Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-winning story.

What happens when transgressive performance art hits an economic downturn? 

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?

Turn off the news. If it's important, someone will text you.

Do you take naps?

I'm napping right now.

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.

Slime City x Kali Malone

What's the capital-W Weirdest thing that's ever happened to you (that you're comfortable sharing)?

[in a falsetto “Ira Rat” voice, you know the one]: One time I gave the exact same interview twice in a row to the coolest press in the known galaxy, except for the final answer which I inexplicably changed the second time through. Also, Matt Blairstone is very handsome and looks like he could bench-press a small car.

Well that’s very kind of you Ira, thank you so much. To be perfectly honest, I can barely bench-press a fellow publisher. Barely.

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BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror + More, Vol. 3, is out June 24th.

You can preorder it here.

Meet the WEIRDo's: 2024 BRAVE NEW WEIRD Award Winner Emma Burnett

Emma Burnett is a researcher and writer. She has had stories in Nature:Futures, Mythaxis, Northern Gravy, Radon, Flash Fiction Online, Apex, Utopia, MetaStellar, Milk Candy Review, Roi Fainéant, JAKE, and more. Her favourite story this month is “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Teleporter” by M.J. Pettit in Flash Fiction Online. You can find Emma on Bluesky or emmaburnett.uk.

Her BNW-winning story “Plastic-eating fungus caused doomsday[2][3]” originally appeared in Nature Journal.

BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror + More, Vol. 3, is out June 24th.

You can preorder it here.

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Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-winning story. 

Information must be disseminated! Log in to help keep the information on this fungal outbreak up to date.

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?

Hope and scream and hope and rage and hope again.

Is the order of these steps precise, or can I start (and likely end) with screaming?

Do you take naps?

Do I take naps? Does rain make your shoes soggy? Is Tom Holland lip synching “Umbrella” the hottest thing ever? Is today a day that ends in -ay?

Oooh, I get my own Q&A!

1. …Yes, that’s what I asked?

2. Yes! Unless you wear booties.

3. I- what? Oh shit, this is modern pop culture isn’t it, I’m terrible at these things.

4. Probably! What am I, a calendar maker? (note: Alex, are we making calendars yet?)

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.

You killed me on this. I legit needed help. The best I've got is: Ex Machina x The Decemberists. I might be wrong. It might be Girl, Interrupted x Led Zeppelin.

The correct answer is Ex Machina x Led Zeppelin.

What's the capital-W Weirdest thing that's ever happened to you (that you're comfortable sharing)?

People like my writing. NGL it blows my mind every time. I'm the kind of person people ignore in a boardroom, or think is just a Weirdo in social settings. I'm not used to being taken seriously. But here, in the wilds of the written word, I'm a reliable witness to my own stories. Mind blowing.

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BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror + More, Vol. 3, is out June 24th.

You can preorder it here.

(Emma cannot though; apparently we killed her. Whoops, our bad.)

Meet the WEIRDo's: 2024 BRAVE NEW WEIRD Award Winner Erik McHatton

Erik McHatton’s passion for horror literature began in grade school and can be credited to an early fascination with the “Terrific Triples” horror collections of Helen Hoke. He began writing fiction seriously in 2019, and has since been published several times in print and online publications such as CHM Magazine, Vastarien, Tales to Terrify, and Lovecraftiana. His first fiction collection, Straw World and Other Echoes from the Void, will be published in 2025 by Undertaker Books. He currently lives in Kentucky with his beautiful wife and kids, along with dear friends and family; surrounded on all sides.

His BNW-winning story, “The Man Who Collected Ligotti”, originally appeared in Cosmic Horror Monthly.

BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror + More, Vol. 3, is out June 24th.

You can preorder it here.

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Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-winning story.

A man is going around collecting Ligotti of all kinds, with dire consequences for all.

Great, so you wrote a story about Carson Winter. Like we don’t publish enough of that guy.

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?

While it may be cliche, the best advice I've ever gotten is, "Keep your chin up." Remember that all things pass, and the pendulum always swings the other way. People are mostly good, even if they disappoint you, and as Mr. Rogers said, "Look for the helpers."

Do you take naps?

Sometimes. More and more the older I get.

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.

Clerks x Jim Steinman

What's the capital-W Weirdest thing that's ever happened to you (that you're comfortable sharing)?

Once, when I was a teenager, I had a group of people come up to me in a town I didn't live in and insist that they knew me, while calling me another name. They wouldn't let it go, and even after I insisted over and over I wasn't this person, they walked away giving me strange looks. I think about that a lot.

They did the same thing to me. I just insisted that I was Carson Winter. 

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BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror + More, Vol. 3, is out June 24th.

You can preorder it here.

Meet the WEIRDo's: 2024 BRAVE NEW WEIRD Award Winner Sharang Biswas

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.

You can preorder it here.

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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.

You can preorder it here.