Fabulist, fantasist, magic realist, crime writer. Are these labels helpful or hindering for writers whose works slide between genres and literary fiction? Craig Davidson skirts the issue by writing his horror stories under a pseudonym. Elisabeth de Mariaffi, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her short stories, has now published a “literary thriller.” Kelly Link, an American “national treasure” according to Neil Gaiman, is a short story writer who frequents the realms of scifi and fantasy. Jeff VanderMeer has been labelled “the king of weird fiction.” The blurring of genre conventions is not new, but it begs the question: “If Kafka had been labelled a fantasy writer, would we all know about The Metamorphosis?”

Normally, “weird” is an insult, but not for these authors. “Weird fiction,” says Robert J. Wiersema, “isn’t so much a genre in itself as a stripping away and blurring of conventions to create something entirely new.” Jeff VanderMeer describes weird fiction this way: “Just as in real life, things don’t always quite add up… and in that space we discover some of the most powerful evocations of what it means to be human or inhuman.” In Kelly Link’s short stories, it’s perfectly fine to encounter two lovers who reunite after death in a nudist camp. Their deep human sentiment is true, even if all else is fecund imagination. Neil Smith’s debut novel delves into the minds of 13-year-olds in an afterlife. Come tour worlds slightly askew, guided by some of their creators.