Weird Babies

by Jaclyn Desforges

Weird Babies is a short story collection about weird babies: a miraculous set of reincarnated quadruplets, babies born from the bellies of trout, babies who are destined to molt like tarantulas, babies who hatch from piles of warm clothes. It's also about the weird baby living in each of us?the tenderest part of ourselves that longs, at whatever the cost, to be loved.

Stories from Weird Babies have appeared in The Ex-Puritan, The Temz Review, Minola Review, and CRAFT Literary. They were also nominated for the Best Of The Net Award (2025), Best American Science Fiction And Fantasy (2024), and Best American Short Stories (2024); were finalists for the Room Magazine Fiction Contest (2024), the CRAFT Short Fiction Prize (2023), and the 2024 CRAFT Novelette Print Prize; and were winners of the Short Works Prize (2019), and the RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award (2018).

Paperback

Expected publication March 1, 2026

About the author

JACLYN DESFORGES is the author of a poetry collection, Danger Flower (Palimpsest Press, 2021) and a picture book, Why Are You So Quiet? (Annick Press, 2020). Jaclyn is a Pushcart-nominated writer and the winner of the 2018 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices award, the 2019 Hamilton Public Library Freda Waldon Award for Fiction, the 2019 Judy Marsales Real Estate Ltd. Award for Poetry, and a 2020 Hamilton Emerging Artist Award for Writing. Her first chapbook, Hello Nice Man, was published by Anstruther Press in 2019. Jaclyn’s writing has been featured in Room Magazine, THIS Magazine, The Puritan, The Fiddlehead, Contemporary Verse 2, Minola Review and others. She is an MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing and lives in Hamilton with her partner and daughter.