Reweirding urban locations as haunted spaces

Labarta, Inés G. (2025) Reweirding urban locations as haunted spaces. Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, 15 (1-2). pp. 65-79. ISSN 2043-0701

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Abstract

This creative-critical article examines two short stories by Latinx authors Mariana Enríquez and Samantha Schweblin simultaneously in their original form in Spanish and their subsequent English translation. It highlights important aspects of the texts which are lost in the translation but are essential to understand their reinventing of the haunting trope by bringing it in to urban spaces and connecting it to particular sociopolitical contexts. This article also highlights how these authors’ storytelling can be read through Mark Fisher’s theory of the ‘eerie’ and the ‘weird’ – and proposes that their work chooses an ingenious hybrid approach. I bring in my own original short fiction to the discussion to show how I am following this hybrid tradition and ‘urban reweirding’ of the haunting trope by reflecting on two of my published short stories, ‘No Greater Love’ (Extra Teeth, 2023) and ‘Flatworms’ (Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, 2022).