BRAVE NEW WEIRDOS, CLASS OF 2023

Alex Woodroe (she/her) is a Romanian writer and editor of dark speculative fiction. She’s the author of Whisperwood, and has several short stories published in venues like Horror Library and the Nosleep podcast. Alex lives in the heart of the Transylvanian region of Romania, and is the Editor in Chief of Tenebrous Press.

Amitha Jagannath Knight is an Indian American writer and poet for all ages, and an award-winning picture book author. She is a graduate of MIT and Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Knight has lived in Texas and Arkansas, and now lives in Massachusetts with her husband, kids, and cats.

Anemone Moss (she/her) is a transgender lesbian speculative fiction and horror writer who grew up in the forests of the Sierra Nevada foothills in northern California and now lives in the outskirts of the SF Bay Area. She spends her time studying history and ecology, making art, watching too many horror movies, and exploring local marshes and forests.

Chris Kuriata lives in and often writes about the Niagara region of Canada. His dark fantasy and horror stories have appeared in publications in Canada, the US, the UK, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, and Japan. His debut novel Sacrifice of the Sisters Lot is published by Palimpsest Press.

Daniel DeRock is a writer from the U.S. living in the Netherlands. His work has appeared, among other outlets, in Pithead Chapel, Gone Lawn, MoonPark Review, and Ligeia Magazine. He is the co-author of Spark Bird, a collaborative novel (Thirty West Publishing House, 2024).

David Simmons lives in Baltimore with his wife and daughter. He is the author of the Ghosts of Baltimore Duology (Broken River Books) where the supernatural and strange grapple with the ever-present past of East and West Baltimore. He is a regular contributor to Books to Prisoners, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster a love of reading behind bars, encourage the pursuit of knowledge and self-empowerment, and break the cycle of recidivism.

Eirik Gumeny is the editor of Atomic Carnival Books and the author of Infernal Organs and the Exponential Apocalypse series. His short fiction has appeared in, among others, Kaleidotrope, Andromeda Spaceways, and Escalators to Hell (From Beyond Press). His nonfiction has been published by Cracked, Wired, and The New York Times. In 2014 he received a double lung transplant and technically died a little. He got better.

Elena Sichrovsky (she/they) is a queer disabled writer who uses the lens of body horror to explore themes of identity, grief, and trauma. Her work is inspired by a rich legacy of mothers and fathers who should have but did not go to therapy. In their next life they’d like to be a two-headed calf.

Geneve Flynn is a speculative fiction editor, author, and poet; and the winner of two Bram Stoker Awards, a Shirley Jackson Award, an Aurealis Award, and recipient of the 2022 Queensland Writers Fellowship. Her work has been nominated and short/longlisted for the British Fantasy, Locus, Ditmar, Australian Shadows, Elgin, and Rhysling Awards, and the Pushcart Prize. She is the co-editor of Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women.

Hussani Abdulrahim is a writer from Kano, Nigeria. He won Ibua Journal’s 2023 Bold Call and the 2022 Toyin Falola Prize. He was the first runner-up for the 2023 Kendeka Prize. He has also been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and a finalist for the Boston Review Prize, Gerald Kraak Award, Afritondo Prize, and ACT Award. His work has appeared in Boston Review, Wilted Pages, Brittle Paper, Evergreen Review, Solarpunk, and Ibua Journal.

Ivan Zoric lives and writes in Portland, Oregon after surviving a turbulent childhood in a war-torn country whose name does not exist anymore. His central themes are immigration, displacement and the horror at the heart of losing identity. He has been published in Tales to Terrify, A Walk In a Darker Wood and A Walk In the City of Shadows.

After a marketing career in Washington DC, NYC and Santa Barbara, CA, Judith Shadford received her MFA at Pacific Lutheran University. Essays and short stories have appeared in Shark Reef Journal, Aesthetic Armchair, River & Sound Review, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Seize the Press. Shadford’s interest in the extraordinary, non-planetary is rooted in a (weird) triumverate of CS Lewis’s space trilogy and the works of Ursula LeGuin and Mary Doria Russell.

Karlo Yeager Rodríguez is originally from the enchanted isle of Puerto Rico, but moved to Baltimore some years ago where he lives happily with his wife and one odd dog.

K.S. Walker writes speculative fiction from a city in the Midwest with a river winding through it. This river may or may not be an ancient power that makes seductive bargains. Their work often explores themes of transformation, longing, and belonging and has been published in many venues. Their work has appeared in FIYAH, The Deadlands, Baffling Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, among others.

LC von Hessen (they/them) is a writer, noise musician, multidisciplinary artist/performer, and former Morbid Anatomy Museum docent. Their work has appeared in Bury Your Gays, Seize the Press, The Book of Queer Saints, Stories of the Eye, YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY, Vastarien, and many others. Their debut short story collection will be released in late 2024 through Grimscribe Press. An ex-Midwesterner, von Hessen lives in Brooklyn with a talkative orange cat.

Matt Blairstone (he/him) is a writer, editor, artist, indie comics creator and the Founder/Publisher of Tenebrous Press. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Sleep is folly.

Michael Bettendorf (he/him) is a writer from the US Midwest. His short fiction has appeared/is forthcoming at Drabblecast, Sley House Press, and elsewhere. Michael’s debut experimental novel/gamebook TRVE CVLT is forthcoming from Tenebrous Press. He works in a high school library in Lincoln, Nebraska—a place he tries to convince the world is too strange to be a flyover state.

M.M. Olivas’ work has appeared in Uncanny, Weird Horror Magazine, Apex, Bourbon Penn and more. As a trans, first-generation Chicana, Olivas’ fiction explores intersection of queer and diasporic experiences. She currently resides in the Bay Area, earning her MFA at San Jose State University and collecting transforming robots. Her debut novel, Sundown in San Ojuela, will release in the fall of 2024 through Lanternfish Press.

Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas was born and raised in Mexico but now lives in the U.S. She is a graduate of the Clarion West class of 2019. Her short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology She Walks in Shadows, and elsewhere.

Patrick Malka (he/him) is a high school science teacher from Montreal, Quebec, where he lives with his partner and two kids. His recent flash fiction can be found in Midsummer Dream House, Broken Antler, Maudlin House, Nocturne magazine, and Sky Island Journal, among others.

perfect kiss strickoll (he/she) is a writer and film student currently located in sunny California. He likes to write about sad queers with bizarre interpersonal hang-ups, as informed by his lifelong love and study of the horror genre.

Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Ignyte, Locus, British Fantasy, and Crawford awards. Currently, she is the Edmonton Public Library writer-in-residence and an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod. She is the author of the ‘Beneath the Rising’ series of novels as well as several novellas.

Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, and acquired several degrees in the arts and sciences. Now she writes speculative fiction in Portland, Oregon. Rachael is a Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, and Otherwise Award finalist. Her fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, and all four Escape Artists podcasts, among others.

Simone le Roux is a speculative fiction writer based in Cape Town, South Africa with her partner, two cats, and an ancient dog. She has a cum laude Neuroscience degree that she does not use, and an enduring interest in anything spooky or dangerous. When she’s not writing, Simone is a semi-professional aerialist.

Thomas Ha is a Nebula and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated writer of speculative short fiction. His work has been published in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Weird Horror Magazine, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, among others. Thomas grew up in Honolulu and, after a decade-plus of living in the northeast, now resides in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.