Weird Babies
Forthcoming from Gordon Hill Press/PQL in Fall 2026
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 within 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.
This project is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Kind Words About Weird Babies
“At the heart of it all—thundering through the story toward its glistening, uncanny conclusion—is love…. Here, we find a piece that unites those essential virtues of sentence-level innovation and overall thematic coherence to create a short story that is stunning in its degree of complexity and elegance.”
“From the captivating opening sentence to the stunning finale, The Gall is a dreamlike study of aching motherhood and loss and almost mythological stories of tragic misunderstanding. The imagery is particularly fresh and powerful and visceral: the reader cannot help but be moved.”
“Desforges’ story is an artful accomplishment; the author braids Aristotle, botany, and fairy tales into a story of remarkable subtlety. The ambitious and sophisticated structure of the work results in moments of brilliant and unusual interplay between its different parts. ”
“I just read “Wet” and am sitting here crying into my coffee... thank you for writing something so beautiful and gut-wrenchingly relatable.”
“Oh, Jaclyn... this story is stunning.”
Accolades for These Stories
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For “Mothworld”
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for "Wet"
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For "Wet"
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For "Wet"
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For "Grief"
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For "Wet"
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For "The Gall"
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For "The Gall"