Week 8 Recap: Baby Bruiser
Baby Bruise wins a photo finish
Baby Bruise won Week 8 by a single vote. One. Vote.
The competition was tight all week between the blurry bride of Baby Bruise and the boy racer of Freelance by Kevin M. Kearney.
Ultimately, however, tiny wedding bells rang, and Baby Bruise marched down the aisle to victory.
Wow! What a round! My blood pressure is still returning to normal. Or maybe it’s the caffeine? Or the benzedrine? Or the Chinese virility supplements? Regardless, it’s been a wild ride. Glad you were a part of it, dear bracketeer.
Week 8 Winner: Baby Bruise by Danielle Chelosky
Huge congrats to Danielle Chelosky and the Filthy Loot crew, plus a warm tip of the hat to Freelance, which nearly took it!
Week 9: Is There Something on My Face?
This week’s contenders face us head-on with chimeras, explosions, disintegrations, and, of course, horns for eyes. So go ahead. Squash the pomegranate, ingest the magic arils, and peer deeply into this week's mind-bending book covers.
- Sympathy for Wild Girls by Demree McGhee (Feminist Press, May 6, 2025): This debut novel blends poetic grit with Southern heat, chronicling the bonds, betrayals, and brutalities of girlhood with blistering intimacy.
- Monster by Jowita Bydlowska (Anvil Press, October 22, 2024): A haunting portrait of addiction, desire, and self-destruction. Bydlowska’s prose stalks the reader like a shadow, asking what remains when the performance of recovery becomes its own lie.
- All The Places We Love Have Been Left In Ruins by Ariel Francisco (Burrow Press, October 22, 2024): In this elegy to a vanishing Miami, Francisco blends satire, sorrow, and sharp observation to mourn the losses climate change has already carved into the landscape of home.
- Today, Aries by Kalie Pead (White Stag Publishing, June 2, 2025): A cosmic-poetic tarot of self-discovery. Pead’s verses explore liminality and fate, accompanied by an interactive tarot generator that transforms poetry into divination.
Week 9 Lineup
Voting is open now through Sunday at 11pm ET. Please note that votes cast by shadow selves will be counted in a separate dimension.
Tap Here to VoteThanks for voting!
Bracket Update
The full bracket view on the site gives a sense of the tournament's scale, but it's a bit tricky to navigate (especially on a phone), so I'm considering a new page that will show past lineups, with winners highlighted. It will be easy to scroll without the need for zooming. So that might happen. Please try to contain your excitement.
Hoping the Week 9 cosmic head space opens up all around you,
Will Pass
Book Jacket Bracket Guy