Call for Submissions
I edit The Best Horror of the Year for (Night Shade Books) and am currently reading for the eighteenth volume, covering material published in 2025.
I am looking for stories and poetry from all branches of horror: supernatural, uncanny, sf horror, psychological, dark crime, terror tales, or anything else that might qualify.
This is an all reprint anthology, so I’ll only consider material published in 2025. Deadline is December 1st 2025.
Authors please confirm that your publishers are sending me review copies. If a book or magazine is coming out after my deadline, I’ll look at galleys or manuscripts. DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE.
The only excuse is if you’re a foreign publisher and shipping everything at one time saves postage. If you want your work to get a fair read, do not do this.
I’ll look at e-versions of anthos and collections only if they’re navigable and have running heads. Otherwise, they won’t be read. I always prefer print, if available.
Authors can query as to whether I have/need your collection or an anthology/magazine in which you have a story at datlow@yahoo.com.
My summation of “the year in horror” includes novels, anthologies, collections, nonfiction, poetry, art books, and “odds and ends”– material that doesn’t fit elsewhere but that might interest horror readers.
Ellen Datlow
Best Horror of the Year Volume Eighteen
8 Stuyvesant Oval 9G
NY NY 10009
I regularly cover most magazines/webzines and even podcasts that publish horror: F&SF, The Dark, Nightmare, Not One of Us, crime digests, Horrorzine, Uncanny, Apex, CHM, The Deadlands, Penumbric, Supernatural Tales, Nightmare Abbey-when their publishers send me the material. If you’re not sure, ask them first).
Please ask your publisher to send the entire magazine or anthology-unless the venue doesn’t regularly publish horror. In that case, you can send me a word file of your story. For online publications, email individual word doc files—not pdf files– include on the ms where and when the story has been published.
If I choose a story you will be informed. Otherwise, you will not hear back.
Ellen Datlow
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