TOD 081 Weird Metamorphosis or Life Change: Where the Body Becomes the Setting

Show Notes

In this podcast, The Outer Dark Virtual Symposium 2020 continues with Weird Metamorphosis or Life Change: Where the Body Becomes the Setting, the weekend’s first panel moderated by Lesley Wheeler and featuring Mike Allen, Benjamin Capps, Fiona Maeve Geist, Edward Austin Hall, Brooke Warra, and teri.zin. Trigger warning that the raw, no-holds-barred, and lively discussion begins with each writer’s perspective on their own acute experiences with body horror in their lives and fiction, then quickly dives into the terror of transformation as ‘hostile takeover’, the boundary of being human and nonhuman as ‘uncanny crossing’, when mutation is joyous, hallucination when you don’t know if the body change is real, the tantalizing ‘possibility’ in becoming Other, Catholicism, visibility vs invisibility, the strangeness of childbirth, discomfort in one’s own body, monstrosity as an everyday thing, laughter as a mode to respond to body horror, the weirdness of aging, and much more. Plus Mike Allen reads (0:59:07) his poem ‘The Paper Boy’ from Aftermath of an Industrial Accident and an excerpt from ‘The Comforter’ in A Sinister Quartet. The evening closes with the filmmakers Q&A portion (1:12:23) of the first-ever The Outer Dark Friday Night Frights short film program featuring Toothache (dir: Stacey Palmer). Re-Home (dir: Izzy Lee) and Civet (dir: Benjamin Capps) , and moderated by Brian Hauser. Scroll down for Additional Links to fiction and films recommended in this episode.

This program block is sponsored by Nightscape Press; Trepidatio, an imprint of Journalstone; and Word Horde. Thanks also to Horla Level Sponsors, Nightfire (Tor), and Perpetual Motion Machine, and our Presenting “The Thing” Level sponsors, This Is Horror and Dekalb Entertainment Commission. This programming took place on Friday August 14, 2020.

It takes a Weird Village to Make Something Weird happen, and we want to express so much Weird Love to The Outer Dark Symposium 2020 community who took a chance on our new Weird virtual format this year. Go to TheOuterDark.org and click on “Symposium” to check out the complete program schedule of all the exciting readings and panels coming this Fall on The Outer Dark podcast. Thank you to our guests, ticket-holders, Indiegogo supporters, volunteers, scholarship recipients, patrons, and sponsors: Argawarga Press, Broken Eye Books, Dim Shores, Dunhams Manor Press, Eraserhead Press, The Hazeland Books by Matthew Maxwell (Broken Eye Books), Innsmouth Free Press, Kino Lorber, Mythic Delirium Press, Nightscape Press, Perpetual Motion Machine, Pseudopod, The Revelator, Shudder, Signal Horizon, Skeleton Hat Podcast, Trepidatio Publishing, Undertow Publications, Underworld Dreams by Daniel Braum (Lethe Press), The Willows, Word Horde, Grimscribe Press/Vastarien: A Literary Journal, Xylographilia and Nightfire (Tor). The Outer Dark Virtual Symposium 2020 was Presented by This Is Horror and Dekalb Entertainment Commission.