I wrote a book! Of short stories! It’s called…
Weird Babies
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.
Forthcoming from The Porcupine’s Quill in fall 2026!
❃About the Author
Jaclyn Desforges is the queer and neurodivergent author of Danger Flower (Palimpsest Press/Anstruther Books), winner of the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry and one of CBC's selections for the Best Canadian Poetry of 2021. Selected for the New York Times-featured Lunar Codex Project, Danger Flower travelled to the moon in March 2025. Jaclyn is also the author of Why Are You So Quiet? (Annick Press, 2020), a picture book which was shortlisted for a Chocolate Lily Award and selected for the 2023 TD Summer Reading Club.
Her stories and poems have appeared in CRAFT Literary, The Fiddlehead, Contemporary Verse 2, Room Magazine, The Ex-Puritan, The Temz Review, Minola Review, THIS Magazine, and others across North America. An alumna of the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Jaclyn holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia's School of Creative Writing. She lives in Hamilton with her partner and daughter, teaches creative writing at Wilfrid Laurier University, and is working on her first novel with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
✹ Kind words about Weird Babies✹
Here’s the scoop on just a few of the stories…
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"WET"
Nominated for the Best Of The Net Award (2025), Best American Science Fiction And Fantasy (2024), and Best American Short Stories (2024); Finalist for the CRAFT Short Fiction Prize (2023).
A woman with a college-aged daughter, disordered eating, and an unexplained gaggle of mysterious infants must come to terms with her traumatic past.
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"THE GALL"
Winner of the RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award (2018) and the Short Works Prize (2019). Originally published in Minola Review.
A braided story about sexual trauma, new motherhood, and the reproductive strategies of the fig wasp. Told in reverse chronological order, this piece follows a young mother as she processes the traumatic conception of her child through Aristotle, entomology, and the memory of her sister’s strange fairy tale.
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"MOTHWORLD"
Finalist for the CRAFT Novelette Print Prize (2024).
An insect researcher on an unfamiliar planet with a swirling black void for a roommate must let go of all she thinks she knows about love, nature, and reality itself in order to save her son.
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"DUST"
The parentified eldest of a set of miraculous quadruplets plots to save her sisters by fleeing the ostrich farm on which they're trapped. Along the way, she begins recalling past life memories of herself and her sisters as whales, opossums, and bears. A story about the ways in which we hide certain truths from our conscious minds in childhood in order to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe.
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"CAKE"
A woman clashes with her sisters by insisting on a strange annual memorial for their late mother.
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PLUS MORE! 13 STORIES IN ALL
Early Birds: You Get Pre-Order Bonuses!
Order your copy before August 30th ‘25 and receive:
A downloadable Weird Babies cootie catcher!
An invite to an exclusive online writing workshop
Plus: Access to all future bonuses…
… as well as the knowledge that you’re supporting a Canadian small press author who appreciates you a lot a lot a lot.
pre-order now
(then come back & fill out the form below ⇣⇣⇣)