Courtenay-based speculative fiction author K.A. Wiggins is one of 2025’s “Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction” and “Best New Weird Horror” writers.
The two annual awards programs sift through hundreds of short stories to select the best titles of the last calendar year for publication in reprint anthologies.
The Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction series is published by Ontario-based Ansible Press and edited by Writers of the Future Grand Prize Winner Stephen Kotowych.
Wiggins’s “The Patron Saint of Flatliners,” a gritty ghost story about fentanyl, faith, and family abandonment set in the Vancouver drug poisoning crisis — and based on a true story — has been selected for the third volume of the series. It was first published by Mysterion in 2024 and can be read online.
The Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction, Volume Three is launching at Ottawa’s CanCon in October and will be in stores in November.
The Brave New Weird: Best New Weird Horror series is published by Oregon-based Tenebrous Press and edited by Romanian author and Tenebrous Editor-in-Chief Alex Woodroe.
Wiggins’s “The Tangle (Did Not Kill Kitsault)”, an ecopunk-flavoured cryptid horror featuring B.C.’s weirdest ghost town, the 2023 Okanagan/Shuswap wildfires, and structural refrains, has been selected out of nearly a thousand submissions for the third year of the popular awards program. It was first published by Strange Horizons in 2024 and can also be read online.
Brave New Weird: Best New Weird Horror, Volume Three will be released on June 24 and can be ordered directly from the publisher or anywhere books are sold.
“While it’s an honour to have my work recognized,” Wiggins commented, “what I’m really excited about is that these stories featured British Columbian characters and settings. I think there’s a real interest and openness to our culture and voices right now from not only other Canadians, but across the world. Whether it’s my ‘West Coast Weird’ or Kim Bannerman’s ‘Cascadia Gothic’ or the many (many!!) hockey romances hitting shelves, Canucks are having a moment on the world stage. Though, really, when I think about all our fantastic writers and other artists, it’s obvious there’s no need to hand the limelight back to New York Publishing and Hollywood any time soon!”
Her books can be found in stores throughout the Comox Valley, including Blue Heron Books, Books 4 Brains, Compass Gallery + Gifts (Airport), Laughing Oyster Bookshop, Roam Store + Studio, and Smöl Store (formerly Little Village Store, Cumberland), and her upcoming best-of anthologies also can be ordered at any of these booksellers.
