Redwater — Simon Bestwick

Caker’s Man — Matthew Holness

Black Leg — Glen Hirshberg

The Offering — Michael Marshall Smith

Fox Girl — Lee Murray

Shuck — G. V. Anderson

The Hunt at Rotherdam — A. C. Wise

Dancing Sober in the Dust — Steve Toase

The God Bag — Christopher Golden

The Strathantine Imps — Steve Duffy

The Quizmasters — Gerard McKeown

All Those Lost Days — Brian Evenson

“Elephant Subjected to the Predations of a Mentalist” – Dir. B.S. Stockton, 1921

And “Ol’ Will’s Birthday Bash and Dither Family Reunion” – Dir. Various, 1952.

— Jonathan Raab                                                                                

Three Sisters Bog — Eóin Murphy

The Steering Wheel Club — Kaaron Warren                                     

The King of Stones — Simon Strantzas

Stolen Property — Sarah Lamparelli

Shards — Ian Rogers

Chit Chit — Steve Toase

Poor Butcher-Bird — Gemma Files

Trap — Carly Holmes

I’ll Be Gone By Then — Eric LaRocca

Jack-in-the-Box — Robin Furth

Tiptoe — Laird Barron

Call for Submissions

I edit The Best Horror of the Year for (Night Shade Books) and am currently reading for the fifteenth volume, covering material published in 2022.

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 2022. Deadline is December 1st 2022. 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 do not have time to carefully read a year’s worth of magazine issues and 10-20 original anthologies in two weeks.

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” in the front of every volume includes novels, anthologies, collections, chapbooks, nf, poetry, art books, and “odds and ends”– material that doesn’t fit elsewhere but that might interest horror readers. But I must be aware of this material in order to mention it.

Ellen Datlow

Best Horror of the Year Volume Fifteen

8 Stuyvesant Oval 9G

NY NY 10009

****I regularly cover many magazines/webzines that publish horror (Black Static, Cemetery Dance, F&SF, The Dark, Nightmare, crime digests, and webzines such as Horrorzine, Uncanny, Apex, etc.-when their publishers send me the material).

Please ask your publisher to send the entire magazine or book-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– including on the ms where the story has been published.

If  I choose a story you will be informed. Otherwise, you will not hear back.

thank you

Ellen Datlow

www.datlow.com

And here we go-my next original anthology Screams From the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous will be out from Nightfire June 7th.

On sale 6.7.22, pre-order now: https://tornightfire.com/catalog/screams-from-the-dark-tales-of-monsters-and-the-monstrous-ellen-datlow/… Design: Esther Kim

Art: GettyImages