The cult section of the literary world
EIGHT WILD MINDS! THIRTY-TWO WILD FLICKS! (PLUS TEN FOR EXTRA CREDIT!) Yes, BIZARROCON IS BACK!!! The almost-annual (we missed a year) celebration of creative weirdness is happening this weekend in Portland, Oregon. Although time-honored tradition had us hanging with the magnificent McMenamin’s Edgefield in Troutdale for the last couple decades, […]
Best Collection: Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment by Mo Moshaty (Tenebrous Press) The Tarot holds mystery, prediction, and unsettling omens for those who practice, divine, or are sensitive to it. A turn of the cards weaves CLAIRVIOLENCE through space and time to delve into the stories of those shaken […]
The Wonderland Book Awards this May at BizarroCon 2026 in Portland, Oregon, and we’re beginning the process of building this year’s list of eligible books. That’s right! MAY! No waiting until November to celebrate last year’s books. To make the awards as inclusive and representative of the bizarro community as possible, we’re […]
In beautiful Portland, Oregon, from May 14th through 17th, 2026. Expect: workshops, readings/performances, awards, great times! Not to mention an amazing collection of some of the weirdest and wildest multi-disciplinary writers, publishers, artists, and creators you could possibly imagine, all under one roof! Thursday evening gathering welcoming attendees, with the bulk […]
Best Collection: The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook by Robert Guffey (Madness Heart Press) “Robert Guffey’s The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is weirder than parthenogenesis, weirder than the Republican Party, weirder than the fetishizing of pregnancy that suffuses our culture, weirder than all the back issues of Weird Tales combined. You […]
The Wonderland Book Awards are a recognition presented annually at BizarroCon for superior achievement in bizarro fiction writing. The 2025 awards, for books published in 2024, will be presented in November. Preliminary voting has ended, and the final ballot has been determined. Here are the nominations for this year’s Wonderland Book Awards: NOVEL Starlet […]
Garrett Cook here. Efe Tusder approached me on Reddit. Self-published Bizarro guy. He was patient as I looked through his pieces, which I found surging with both emotion and outsider style, but not necessarily right. He was patient and polite as I sifted through about a dozen stories to find […]
by Ben Arzate Martin goes to a Bible camp while his mom works on her dream gig of doing makeup for ahorror movie. What he doesn’t expect is that he’s going to face something there scarier than anymovie he’s ever seen. Meanwhile, his mother keeps sending him emails, weaving tall […]
Garrett Cook here. Ryan C Bradley is one of the most entertaining writers and performers I’ve ever met. His performances are lively, and his ear for language makes everything delectably readable. I’m glad I reached out to Ryan because he deserves all the ink he can get. My Whey or […]
International takes on Bizarro always make me happy. Oddly enough, America is not the only place whose strangeness is destroying consensus reality as we know it. Ronaldo Lages comes out of Brazil and has for you a piece that feels grandiose while still being quiet and poetic. I quite like […]
Contributor’s Note: Things in LA are, if anything, only much more intense than they were when the city made headlines across the world due to civil unrest and violently repressive ICE raids (USA State-Sanctioned kidnappings and murder). This past week, ICE did what they were always going to inevitably do: […]
Garrett Cook here. I breathed a sigh of relief on this first week of open subs when I got someone I knew. Ben Arzate writes hip, transgressive plays and novellas influenced by Battaille and the like, along with stuff on Japanese noise bands you’ve never heard of. It’s a truly […]
I’m thrilled to share the seventh interview of the Bizarro Books as Resistance series, this one with Rick Claypool. When I thought of this series, Rick was one of the first people I knew I wanted to have participate in it. And I’m so glad he agreed. Rick is a […]
by Ben Arzate The Unreprinted explores the depths of books forgotten and fallen into the limbo of being out-of-print and only available as used copies. A place where strange and bizarre books can often be found. In this entry for Bizarro Central, we take a look at Samuel R. Delany‘s […]
Garrett Cook here. Alaina Hammond is dear to me; she is a friend from college who has become a sister to me, a vestige of family instrumental to rebuilding my life. She is smart, determined, funny, and as giving as a person can be. For years, I’ve been in a […]
This week’s interview features Bridget D. Brave. While I don’t know her all that well, I’ve heard nothing but great things about her from other authors and friends. She is a weird horror author living at the edge of the Ozarks in Missouri. When she’s not writing, she is flexing […]
Garrett Cook here. I trust John Baltisberger with a lot of my boldest work. As a publisher, he has let me get away with depressing, gory, hardcore pornography and an RPG made to mock the gamemaster’s mom until they quit. Madness Heart has done a lot to reinvigorate the scene […]
Contributor’s Note: Once again, Andrew here. Last week, I wondered whether or not other cities would follow the uprising in Los Angeles, and they did almost immediately, standing in solidarity with Los Angeles as they also worked nonstop to protect their own communities. The militant resistance taking place across the […]
Garrett Cook here. I’ve been working with Chris Meekings for over a decade now in one way or another. I was proud to present his book Elephant Vice, a buddy cop yarn in which Vincent Van Gogh was partnered with the Hindu God Ganesha. His work is very British, very […]
Contributor’s Note: Andrew here. I was born in LA and have lived in this city for all my life. With this series focusing on resistance, I wanted to take a brief moment to highlight the resistance taking place in the streets of Los Angeles as I type this. Last Friday […]
by Ben Arzate How can anything make sense once it feels so big? I’m barely in control of myself. How can the sky be anything but a huge, beautiful fluke? Whatever it is, I’ll take it. The unnamed narrator of Thomas Moore’s We’ll Never Be Fragile Again spends the one […]
I don’t know Matt Henshaw all too well, so am sad to report I can’t accompany this piece with one of my sincere, heartfelt compliments. What I can say is that Matthew was quick to respond when I said I wanted a couple more pieces before we open to unsolicited […]
Welcome back to another week of Bizarro Books as Resistance. For the third installment, I was lucky enough to interview John Baltisberger. John is the author of the Wonderland Award winning book All I Want is to Take Shrooms and Listen to the Color of Nazi Screams, among numerous others. He […]
by Ben Arzate Norman Spinrad’s new, surreal novel is written in the form of a series of documents related tothe DREAMMASTER, a machine which allows its user to control their dreams like choosing afilm to watch. It consists of advertisements, manuals, records of dreams, and online dispatches.Through these, a narrative […]
Luciana Centeno does work that is really hard to categorize, even for Bizarro. It seems on the surface like it’s dark fantasy until you look at the transgressive elements and the meditations on queer selfhood at the core of it. This piece and the novel whose world it comes from […]
Welcome back to Bizarro Books as Resistance! For the second installment of this series, I’m pleased to present this conversation with Katy Michelle Quinn. I first met Katy back in 2013 while attending university in Seattle. We went to the same school and met through a classmate. We would often […]
Shelly Lyons comes out of screenwriting. It’s a specific, draconian, and hard-to-develop skillset that can sometimes hamper writers trying their hand at fiction. Shelly has no such issue. She takes the scenemaking skills and the eyes of a screenwriter and brings that to fiction. Shelly is an impressive voice, and […]
I often think about resistance literature. Ideas for bizarro books of resistance frequently swirl around my mind. But when I brought this topic up on the bizarro discord a few months ago, the group could only list a handful of bizarro books that could be categorized as resistance literature. I […]
I have been working with Madeleine Swann for years. She has a gift for combining wonder, horror, and beauty into some of the most distinctive and unusual fiction you have ever read. A new piece from Madeleine is always a pleasure and one I am grateful to share. Making Memories […]
Garrett Cook here. I have known Michael Allen Rose since BizarroCon 2 where we found each other to be staunch defenders of each other’s pitches in the pitch workshop, which is notable because mine was otherwise universally disliked. He is now President of the Bizarro Writer’s Association as well as […]
Garrett Cook here. Jonathan Gensler impresses the hell out of me. Everything from his in your face performance style to the meticulous intensity of his prose show that he’s going places. He’s doing great stuff for the Bizarro community and I think you’ll dig the work . Tattoorovka by Jonathan […]
Garrett Cook here. Christine Morgan has been a supportive matriarch in the Bizarro community. She is ready with cookies, cool gifts, and support whenever we have needed it. She also has an edge that comes out of nowhere and knocks you on your ass. Christine is one of my favorite […]
Garrett Cook here. Yeah, that’s two fish people in a row. To quote Marge Simpson, “I just think they’re neat”. Matthew Gleason is also neat. Matthew has a gleeful nihilism, a strong hustle, and a passion for everything grotesque that makes them one to watch. False Hopes by Matthew J. […]
Garrett Cook here. Writer, editor, Wonderland winner, Bizarro Showdown winner. Longtime Bizarro. Proud to be here, taking the reigns of Flash Fiction Friday. In the coming months, you’ll see handpicked stories from Bizarros old and new and weird folks in the periphery of the community. First up is an author […]
by Ben Arzate The Unreprinted explores the depths of books forgotten and fallen into the limbo of being out-of-print and only available as used copies. A place where strange and bizarre books can often be found. For this first entry for Bizarro Central, we take a look at the unusual […]
