PUBLISHER'S NOTE

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Dear Weird Lit Readers,

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After a lively, record-breaking submissions window, we’ve spent the last several weeks hard at work producing our sixth issue—all this while I’ve been abroad for an artist residency in rural Finland.

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As I reread our selections for this issue, collective themes emerge. This is possibly my favorite process in publishing Weird Lit: connecting seemingly disparate ideas and intuiting their greater purpose. The way these stories come together to create something bigger than themselves—bigger than their creators—inspires awe. 

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In this issue, we’re clued in to the struggles of the bereaved. We’re poised to relate to the bread-mutilating writer. We work alongside devoted retail employees, the lonesome truck driver, and the military clinician. 

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The characters in these stories are mostly human, though let’s not discount the monsters; their experiences contribute to the collective consciousness too. As Samhain and Halloween approach, their stories feel timely and titillating. 

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These authors offer up tasty bits of the grotesque. They play with form and function, cope with shame and sexuality, and grapple with personal tragedies amidst interplanetary phenomena. 

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Language, too, is highlighted in these stories, with references to Dutch, French, 日本語, Robot. I’m tickled by this developing theme as I’ve spent the past few weeks immersed in a polyglot’s dream: writing grocery lists in Finnish, sharing travel stories with a New Zealander in Japanese, and picking up Scottish, British, and Australian slang, all the while learning of folklore and mythology the world over.

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Through these stories, and my travels, I’m reminded that we’re all citizens of the world; man’s borders are imaginary. These stories span material and virtual settings, rural and cosmopolitan pockets of humanity. The more stories we share from these places, geographical and intellectual, the more we understand that the human condition is universal—not to mention universally weird.

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From my temporary home here in rural Finland, thank you for reading Weird Lit, this fall and always. As you take in these stories, contemplate their universality. Keep your weirdness, your thoughts, and your ambitions global. We’re all weird, on the inside. 

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Speaking of weird, it’s time for my nightly offering to Tonttu, the Finnish sauna elf.

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Until next time, kippis! 

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Yours in worldly weirdness,

 

September Herrin

Publisher & Editor in Chief

Weird Lit Magazine