What’s Weird City?

Weird City is a literary magazine dedicated to strange things in dense places.

Charmed by the likes of Auster, Murakami, and Borges, we’ve found ourselves hungry for more stories that walk the edge between the surreal and the mundane, the unexpected and the clichéd, and the forgotten and the impossible to forget. Some call it Weird Fiction or New Weird or Bizarro; others label it as Magic Realism or Urban Fantasy. But genre trappings don’t concern us, as long as at the heart of the tale there is a bubbling oddity that just manages to escape articulation.

If you’d like to submit a story to Weird City please check out our Submission Guidelines after you’ve perused the rest of this page.

Who We Are

We are Weird City Press (WCP), the imprint which publishes Weird City. Currently our team is, well, a one-man show in the form of writer Michael Alwill (boy is it Seinfeldian to talk about yourself in the third person), along with a rotating set of volunteer readers. You can find more about Mike (me!) via Instagram (@michaelalwill) or on michaelalwill.com.

Our Mission

Our mission is to curate stories from aspiring writers that fit the Weird City vision while staying true to our core values:

1. Respect: For the reader, for the writer, for the people making Weird City happen. We believe the best way to bring interesting fiction to people is through community and collaboration.

2. Growth: We started Weird City to nurture a subgenre of fiction that see far too little of and to be a launchpad for fledgling authors to have their voices heard. We want all those involved with Weird City to feel that it has helped expand their horizons and their capabilities.

3. Fellowship: Whether you see writing as a profession or as a hobby, it can be a lonely, lonely trade. We seek to bring writers with shared interests together and to be an active member of existing writing enclaves.

Our Payment Scale

WCP is about to open submissions for Issue No. 2 and our payment scale will be changing a bit to incorporate a progressive pay scale (details to follow in advance of us opening up to submissions).