The 2015 theme for Manifest West s annual anthology is Western Weird. The works in this collection reflect both myths and suspected truths about the part of the United States we call the West. But this year s edition focuses entirely on the tradition of the strange. To borrow from Jeff VanderMeer s definition for speculative fiction s New Weird, this volume creates a new parallel genre for work that subverts the traditional romanticized ideas about place, playing with cliches about the West in order to put these elements to discomfiting, rather than consoling, ends.

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