Welcome to the first episode of the Read Weird podcast! Join us every other week for a conversation about writing, reading, and teaching weird and experimental fiction.

In this episode, we talk about our philosophy of weirdness, discuss the short story “Dinner” by Amelia Gray, and recount Carlea’s formative experience reading Aimee Bender’s The Girl in the Flammable Skirt.

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Weird Read of the Week
In this episode, we discussed the short story “Dinner” by Amelia Gray, which can be found in the short story collection Museum of the Weird (2010). Gray is also the author of the collections AM/PM (2009) and Gutshot (2015), and the novels Threats (2012) and Isadora, which comes out May 23.

Weirdest Read of All/First Weird
This week’s First Weird was Aimee Bender’s The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1999), described by Carlea Holl-Jensen.

Also mentioned in this episode:
Bruce Sterling’s essay on slipstream fiction, the YA novel Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma, Kate Bernheimer’s essay “Fairy Tale is Form, Form is Fairy Tale“, and this wonderful interview with Kelly Link in the late, great Gigantic: “A Vampire is a Flexible Metaphor“.