"The opening sentence of Amelia Gray s" Museum of the Weird" 'One morning, I woke to discover I had given birth overnight' could serve as a metaphor for the creation of a certain type of story. While many stories come into being through intense authorial diligence and cogitation, others spring into existence in an instant, discharging themselves onto the page almost by magic. "Experienced writers know to approach these latter specimens with skepticism. Inspiration has a seductive power: it wants you to believe that its products are profound and important. Sometimes, miraculously, they are. I don t know what kind of process Gray employed to write the 24 uncategorizable stories in her eccentric and intermittently arresting new collection, but they bear the signs of having been born overnight. They feel inspired, and embody all the weird energy that word implies, even as they struggle under its burdens. "[The] best stories in "Museum of the Weird" register as leaps of faith, brave excursions into the realms of the unreal and convince me that Gray may yet prove an important voice in experimental writing.""--New York Times Book Review""

Amelia Grayis the author of "AM/PM"."" Her writing has appeared in "American Short Fiction, McSweeney s Internet Tendency, DIAGRAM"," " and "Caketrain," among others. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she is the founder and co-host of the reading and music show "Five Things.""