What is Weird, Part I

We publish weird literature online quarterly. We ask for your weird stories, again and again. We swim in submissions of weird short fiction for weeks on end, reading piece after piece from our creative community (thank you!). But what do we really mean by weird lit, anyway? It’s not really a prominent literature subgenre or category, though it has been gaining more serious recognition over the past couple decades. It’s still a vague-feeling term that encompasses a lot of genres, moods, and themes.

In today’s linguistic usage, weird typically means something unusual or strange. Historically, it also indicated something uncanny or supernatural, often related to witchcraft. Prior to that, it was caught up in a slightly different understanding, as Merriam-Webster mentions below:

Weird derives from the Old English noun wyrd, essentially meaning "fate." By the 8th century, the plural had begun to appear in texts as a gloss for Parcae, the Latin name for the Fates—three goddesses who spun, measured, and cut the thread of life.

Shakespeare (or whomever we credit as Shakespeare) likely had a hand in moving the word’s meaning toward witchcraft by using it to describe the three sisters in Macbeth, revitalizing weird from a period of prior disuse. There’s much to unpack in the play’s use of the word and in the portrayal of the sisters, whose characterization is both classically and supernaturally rooted. 

Weird is a challenging term because it can be used in both positive and negative connotations, some of which came into the media spotlight this past year when Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz began using it to describe Republican outlooks on book banning to voters. “These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away,” he said in an interview. Walz was attempting to speak a language that especially younger voters would grasp, mocking and drawing attention to the party’s increasingly extremist views on censorship. I commend his attempt (book banning and censorship are not our friends here), but in his use, being weird isn’t a good thing. Nor was it used for anything positive when the group of high school girls yelled it at you down the hall, or when your older brother labeled you as such for your “creative” fashion choices in 7th grade. And yes, I’m sure that wasn’t just me. 

We like centering our publication on the weird because of its precarious implications. Yes, it can refer to something out of place. Sometimes, that’s clearly not good, as in book banning, or a problematic coworker relationship, maybe a recipe with flavors that clash. And sometimes, weird is a beautiful, open-minded pathway toward thinking outside the box for the better. Toward creating novel ideas or brilliant, unique art and well-written stories that we continue to desperately need. It can be a wealth of creative opportunity. And that is where we at Weird Lit really thrive as editors, readers, and publishers—in the place of potential. We want work that’s controversial, different, iconoclastic, radical, uncanny, strange. But mostly we just want to know that we all have the opportunity to think and express freely. Publishing weird literature reinforces this in the best way we know.