It’s an award, says Brave New Weird anthology editor Alex Woodroe, avoiding any “Is it a breath mint? No, it’s a candy mint!” arguments. Tenebrous Press announced the winners of the second annual Brave New Weird Award on April 9, chosen from over a thousand submissions. They constitute the table of contents of Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror vo. 2 which will be shipped in June.

BRAVE NEW WEIRD VOLUME TWO TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Amitha Jagannath Knight – My Mother, The Exoskeleton
• Anemone Moss – Everything You Dump Here Ends Up in the Ocean
• Chris Kuriata – Family Not Going To Heaven
• Daniel DeRock – Guest Opinion: We must take action regarding the [REDACTED] High School janitor
• David Simmons – Food is Poison
• Eirik Gumeny – A Balanced Breakfast
• Elena Sichrovsky – Embryo
• Geneve Flynn – A Box of Hair and Nail
• Hussani Abdulrahim – The Library Virus
• Ivan Zoric – Our Roots Will Dry Out in the End
• Judith Shadford – Endless Yearning
• Karlo Yeager Rodríguez – Up In the Hills, She Dreams of Her Daughter Deep In the Ground
• KS Walker – River Bargain Baby
• LC von Hessen – Transmasc of the Red Death
• M.M. Olivas – The Prince of Oakland
• Michael Bettendorf – As the Music Plays Groovy
• Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas – Lullaby for the Unseen
• Patrick Malka – Show Me
• Perfect Kiss Strickoll – punctum (o baked alaska for you i am a former american)
• Premee Mohamed – Quietus
• Rachael K. Jones – The Sound of Children Screaming
• Simone le Roux – The Man Outside
• Thomas Ha – In That Crumbling Home

In addition to the Table of Contents, Brave New Weird has also honored a few notable individuals for their contributions to the New Weird spectrum:

BRAVEST, NEWEST, WEIRDEST IN SHORT FICTION:

• BNW Anthology – Jolie Toomajan, ed. – Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic
• BNW Special Issue – Suzan Palumbo, ed. – Strange Horizons Caribbean Special Issue
• BNW Creative Format – Cormack Baldwin,ed. – Archive of the Odd
• BNW Breakout Author – Simo Srinivas – “The Ballad of the Octopus” & many more
• BNW Comic – Bri Crozier – Blackbird Hunting
• BNW Magazine – Charles Tyra, publisher – Cosmic Horror Monthly
• BNW Collection – Lindz McLeod – Turducken

And what is New Weird Horror? Tenebrous Press says:

We define New Weird Horror as a Horror subgenre focused on progress, creatively capturing themes and questions that bleed into fiction straight from the modern reader’s life and future. It acts as a challenge to break new ground in terms of form and content and to engage with the unknown. Beyond that, New Weird Horror will be defined by the winning pieces themselves.