TOD 030 The State of the Weird 2018, A Roundtable Discussion featuring David Davis, Helen Marshall, Stephen Graham Jones, and Sonya Taaffe

Scott Nicolay, David Davis, Helen Marshall, Stephen Graham Jones, Sonya Taaffe

TOD 030 The State of the Weird 2018, A Roundtable Discussion featuring David Davis, Helen Marshall, and Stephen Graham Jones

Scott Nicolay, David Davis, Helen Marshall, Stephen Graham Jones, Sonya Taaffe Scott Nicolay, David Davis, Helen Marshall, Stephen Graham Jones, Sonya Taaffe

TOD 030 The State of the Weird 2018, A Roundtable Discussion featuring David Davis, Helen Marshall, and Stephen Graham Jones TOD 030 The State of the Weird 2018, A Roundtable Discussion featuring David Davis, Helen Marshall, and Stephen Graham Jones

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In this podcast David Davis, Helen Marshall and Stephen Graham Jones join Scott Nicolay for a roundtable discussion of the State of the Weird at the beginning of 2018. Also Sonya Taaffe discusses the state of Weird poetry.

The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird is a unique immersive one-day event featuring approximately 12 hours of panels, readings, signings and social activities centered around contemporary Weird and speculative fiction. The second annual event will be held Sat. March 24, 2018 at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA, one of the Weirdest Places in the U.S. Limited to 75 attendees. Buy your memberships here.

Show Notes

Editor/translator David Davis (managing editor, Weird Fiction Review), author/editor Helen Marshall (editor, Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume 4) and author Stephen Graham Jones (Mapping the Interior) join host Scott Nicolay for the most epic episode of The Outer Dark since last year’s The State of the Weird. The conversation explores the panelists’ observations on whether paying little heed to genre labels can lead to The Weird, the danger in defining and over-marketing The Weird, the evolution of The Weird as the world itself gets Weirder, a different approach to ‘intrusion’ for Weird versus horror, closure versus ambiguous endings, ‘survival’ in Weird fiction, bifurcation and multiverse, dissecting the notion of ‘realism’ as a category, Philip K. Dick, #metoo and de-normalization, benefits of Weird fiction, NecronomiCon Providence as Area X, game-changing writers and editors, Weird film/TV/video-games/podcasts, stumbling into Weird fiction, catalysts for the Weird Renaissance, nature and British Weird fiction, global Weirding, new translated international Weird fiction, Raymond Carver, hunting for The Weird, the Mandela Effect, looking ahead to the most exciting 2018 Weird publications, the rising Weird of Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter, the Frankenstein bicentennial, and more Weird prognostications.

Sonya Taaffe: The State of Weird Poetry

(1:15:30) Sonya Taaffe joins Scott to discuss the Weird Renaissance’s extension into poetry including its place in the larger speculative fiction explosion, an introduction to non-English language Weird poets and readings, defining elements of Weird poetry, the difficulty in tracing speculative poetic lineages, processes of rediscovery, Ursula K. Le Guin and Robinson Jeffers, pushing beyond narrative poetry, flash fiction, the need for critical attention to speculative poetry, many ‘astonishing poets’ you should be reading, some poets engaging with contemporary Weird fiction, E.T.A. Hoffmann and opera, and even more Weird opera!

Be sure to scroll down to Additional Links to find out more about the authors, filmmakers, poets, and composers mentioned in this episode.