Industry News

Welcome to the November edition of the SFWA Market Report.

Please note: Inclusion of any venue in this report does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA. Those markets included on this list pay at least $0.08/word USD in at least one category of fiction. This compilation is not exhaustive of all publication opportunities that pay our recommended minimum professional rate. Additionally, SFWA adheres to our DEI Policy when making selections for this report. We strongly encourage writers to closely review all contracts and consult our resources on best contract practices.

New Markets

Aphrodite
Fever Dreams
Latin American Shared Stories
Loki
Out There
Shatter the Sun: Queer Tales of Untold Adventure
The Daily Tomorrow

Markets Currently Open for Submissions

AE Presents: Unréal
Analog Science Fiction & Fact
Apex Magazine
Asimov’s Science Fiction
Augur (Recently Opened)
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Book XI
Clarkesworld Magazine
Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores (Recently Opened)
Crepuscular Magazine
Escape Pod
Factor Four Magazine
Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter
Infinite Worlds
Issues in Earth Science
khoréo magazine (khoreo) (Recently Opened)
Nature: Futures
Never Whistle At Night Anthology Series
Our Dust Earth (Recently Opened)
Planet Black Joy
PodCastle (Recently Opened)
Reckoning
Samovar
Small Wonders
Stop Copaganda
Tales & Feathers (Recently Opened)
The Cosmic Background
The Deadlands (Recently Opened)
The Orange & Bee (Recently Opened)
Uncharted Magazine
Utopia Science Fiction (Recently Opened)

Markets Recently Closed for Submissions

Afrofuturism Short Stories (Permanent)
Aliens Among Us (SpeKulative Stories Anthology Series) (Permanent)
Cast of Wonders
Dust & Dark
Flash Fiction Online (FFO) (Originals)
Gamut Magazine
Metastellar (Originals)
Solarpunk Magazine
Strange Horizons
This Way Lies Madness (Permanent)
Train Tales (Permanent)

Other Opportunities

Weird Christmas Flash Fiction Contest

Upcoming Market Changes

AE Presents: Unréal‘s Submission window ends soon.
Apex Magazine‘s Submission Window ends soon.
Apex Monthly Flash Fiction Contest‘s Submission Window begins and ends soon.
Aphrodite permanently closes soon.
Augur‘s Limited Demographic Submission Window: BIPOC, trans, and/or disabled and Canadian citizens/permanent residents and/or those who are living on the land colonially known as Canada ends soon.
Baffling Magazine‘s Submission window begins soon.
Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores‘s Submission Window ends soon.
Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores‘s Submission Window begins and ends soon.
Fever Dreams permanently closes soon.
khoréo magazine (khoreo)‘s “Symbiosis” Theme ends soon.
Loki permanently closes soon.
Never Whistle At Night Anthology Series‘s Submission Window ends soon.
PodCastle‘s Submission Window ends soon.
Silent Nightmares Anthology: Stories to be Told on the Longest Night of the Year‘s Submission Window begins soon.
Stop Copaganda‘s Submission window ends soon.
Tales & Feathers‘s Limited Demographic Submission Window: BIPOC, trans, and/or disabled ends soon.
The Orange & Bee‘s Submission window ends soon.
Weird Christmas Flash Fiction Contest temporarily closes soon.

The SFWA Market Report is compiled by David Steffen, editor of Diabolical Plots and The Long List Anthology series, and administrator and co-founder of the Submission Grinder.  You can support Diabolical Plots and the Submission Grinder on PayPal or Patreon or by buying books or merch.

The post SFWA Market Report For November appeared first on SFWA.

Publishers Weekly has announced its list of the best books of 2024, divided into 13 categories.

The Book of Love by Kelly Link (Random House) and James by Percival Everett (Doubleday) were on the overall Top 10 list.

The best books in the SF/Fantasy/Horror category are:

• Memorials, Richard Chizmar (Gallery)
• Metal from Heaven, August Clarke (Erewhon)
• Midnight Rooms, Donyae Coles (Amistad)
• The Mercy of Gods, James

...Read More

Author Phil Rickman, 74, died October 29, 2024. Rickman was a journalist and a prolific author of crime and supernatural fiction, best known for the Merrily Watkins mystery series, adapted into a TV series in 2015.

Philip Rickman was born in Lancashire and lived in Wales. He was a reporter for Wales Today in the 1980s, and worked in radio broadcasting for over two decades, hosting literature show Phil the ...Read More

Artist Greg Hildebrandt, 85, died October 31, 2024.

He frequently collaborated with his identical twin brother Tim (1939-2006) as “The Brothers Hildebrandt,” achieving fame for their illustrations of works by J.R.R. Tolkien, frequently featured in calendars. They also illustrated a 1975 edition of Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham.

Gregory J. Hildebrandt was born January 23, 1939 in Detroit MI. Both Hildebrandts joined the Army ...Read More

The 13 finalists for the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year 2024 have been announced, and include historical novel The Women by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s), who sometimes writes fantasy; Huckleberry Finn reimagining James by Percival Everett (Knopf), who also writes SF; and fantasy novel Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (Random House Children’s Books).

Shortlisted titles are nominated by Barnes and Noble booksellers. The winner will be announced on ...Read More

The Saltire Society announced the 2024 Scotland’s National Book Award shortlist during a livestreamed event in Edinburgh’s Old Town on October 30, 2024. Titles of genre interest follow.

Fiction Book of the Year

• Lost People, Margaret Elphinstone (Wild Stone)
• Hazardous Spirits, Anbara Salam (Baskerville)

Fiction Book First Book of the Year

• Fragile Animals, Genevieve Jagger (404 Ink)

For more information, including the full shortlists, see the Saltire Society’s

...Read More

Reactor compiled a list of “The Most Iconic Speculative Fiction Books of the 21st Century” in various categories.

Works in Translation

• Tender Is the Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses (Scribner)
• I’m Waiting For You and Other Stories, Kim Bo-Young, translated by Sophie Bowman and Sung Ryu (Harper Voyager)
• Cursed Bunny: Stories, Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (Algonquin)
• Our Share of Night, Mariana Enriquez,

...Read More

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced the results of its special election.

President: Kate Ristau

Secretary:  Steven D. Brewer

The newly elected officers and directors-at-large will serve on the SFWA Board from November 1st, 2024, through June 30th, 2025.

Kate Ristau – President Anthony Eichenlaub – Vice President Jonathan Brazee – CFO Steven D. Brewer – Secretary Christine Taylor-Butler – Director-at-Large Phoebe Barton – Director-at-Large Noah ...Read More

The SFWA Board and Elections Committee would like to announce the results of the 2024 special election. Thank you to all our members who took the time to vote.

Kate Ristau has been elected SFWA President and Steven D Brewer has been voted in as SFWA Secretary.

The newly elected officers will serve on the SFWA Board from November 1st, 2024, through June 30th, 2025.

Kate Ristau – President
Anthony Eichenlaub – Vice President
Jonathan Brazee – CFO
Steven D Brewer – Secretary
Christine Taylor-Butler – Director-at-Large
Phoebe Barton – Director-at-Large
Noah Sturdevant – Director-at-Large
Alton Kremer – Director-at-Large

The SFWA Board and staff would like to thank the candidates who volunteered their time and expertise to run for office and those who continue to serve the organization in various ways. Most of our programs, services, committees, and the Board of Directors are run by volunteers.

 

The post 2024 SFWA Special Election Results appeared first on SFWA.

by Marie Croke

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a rolling series, Writing from History, in which creators share professional insights related to the work of using historical elements in fictional prose.

As speculative fiction authors, we twist and remake reality. Yet, when it comes to retelling events or using fiction to manipulate a real-life person’s biography, those places we’re remaking were someone’s home, those events were often the worst days of someone’s life, and those people were someone’s grandmother, cousin, child, whose memories could still be very much alive.

No one is exempt from the pain of having someone shove their hands in your memories, in your home, your life. No one. Not even you.

As an example, during high school I had an English teacher, Ms. Lake, who assigned her students a creative exercise: make an etching of a gravestone, then write a story about the deceased. 

After school, I stopped at a local graveyard. There, I paid respect to a particular grave that shares my last name. Then I sought out the oldest grave, one with a name I suspected would be as unknown to my peers as it was to me, and made my etching. When Ms. Lake asked for volunteers to read their creative exercises out loud, I, terrified of public speaking, was not a volunteer.

Then I went about my day normally, completely ignorant of what happened two periods after.

You see, another student had gone to that same graveyard. Had made her etching less than thirty meters from where I’d made mine. And she was not afraid of public speaking. Not at all. She stood in front of twenty-five of my peers and told a story. About a little girl buried just the year before. A sister. A younger sister. Of mine. Four years old. Died of leukemia.

I finished my day. Stepped outside school. And was promptly pulled aside by Ms. Lake, who asked me: “Did you have a sister die last year?”

No warning. No lead-up. Nothing but an abrupt, dismissive comment on a cold field. Put on the spot, I managed to whisper, No. She’d been my niece.

“Oh, did she die of leukemia?”

I choked out another No. But I didn’t go on.

I didn’t tell her my niece had cerebral palsy, that her lack of coordination had caused her to fall, that she’d been rushed to the emergency room when it became apparent she was more uncoordinated than normal, that she’d had a blood clot that reached her brain. That there was nothing the doctors could do. That my family was wrecked.

I didn’t tell her because it wasn’t any of her business.

Ms. Lake laughed. Said that the other student had gotten it all wrong. Then she walked away, leaving me to wonder how many people had been privy to a false narrative about someone I loved.

As if she’d been a game, a plaything to steal, to twist, to remake.

Sometimes events and people will call you to write about them, but if or when that occurs, consider the following steps to approach your fiction writing respectfully. This approach will allow you to do what you do best—creatively play—but within the parameters of human empathy.

1) Seek out interviews. Speak to the people associated. Show the depth of your care. The passion you have is precious if coming from a fascinated and loving space. Your attention to detail and your questions can create a bond rather than a schism. Human beings crave connection and understanding. Give people those, and they are far more likely to be open to your ideas.

2) Request permission. Just as you would ask to photograph someone on the street, ask to write about their pain and then respect their decision. Some events aren’t meant for you to write about, especially in the cases of situations outside your culture or home. Some people aren’t yours to take liberties with.

Many authors will use others’ stories as inspiration for their own tales, changing names and locations to ease themselves around the “all persons fictitious” disclaimer that many works use to protect themselves from libel. Others will consider their everyday acquaintances as free-game character fodder, believing that those acquaintances will never know and that ignorance suffices.

If you’re too afraid to ask, then maybe the story percolating in your mind isn’t for you to write.

3) Respect boundaries. If you are given permission, the next step is to be sure you’re listening to the limits. And there will be limits. Compare this type of fictitious writing to narrative nonfiction, where journalists respect anonymity or refrain from sharing more intimate parts of stories relayed to them. Don’t give in to the presumption that because you can, you should.

4) Consider the effect of your creative decisions. Not just on your story’s plot or on the characters you’re borrowing, but on readers. It’s easier to write about people who have long ago died; it’s a much more dangerous endeavor to dive into stories concerning more recent situations.

We’re often told to write without editors in mind, but in this specific case, I believe in bending that rule. Think about how the changes you enact will affect others. When crafting a story about an event that impacted a multitude of people, it’ll be far more difficult to consider everyone’s view, but by checking ourselves, making sure we’re coming at the situation with the kindest hearts and respectful words, we’re likely to craft a story that is far more meaningful. Given the fact that tragic events tend to be more attractive to write about than happier ones, this advice is particularly important.

I know that you will use your daily life as inspiration, and that includes both painful, awful situations all around the world and the minutia closer to home. All I ask is that you remember respect. Don’t stand up in front of your peers and readers and write creative lies about someone else’s grief. Don’t presume you know someone else’s family or culture or home. Don’t perpetuate pain when you can immortalize kindness.

Marie Croke is a fantasy & science-fiction writer with over 40 stories in publication. She is a graduate of the Odyssey workshop, first place winner in the Writers of the Future contest, and her work has been published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Apex Magazine, Diabolical Plots, Fireside, Flash Fiction Online, and Cast of Wonders among many other fine magazines and anthologies. She has worked as a slush editor for multiple magazines, including khōréō, and has written reviews for Apex Magazine. She is now an Acquisitions Editor at Dark Matter INK. She lives in Maryland with her family and enjoys crocheting, kayaking, and aerial dancing in her free time.

The post The Dangers of Writing on Someone Else’s Heartstrings appeared first on SFWA.

Actor and literacy advocate LeVar Burton was one of 19 recipients of the National Humanities Medals. The 2022 and 2023 medals were presented by President Biden on Monday, October 21, 2024, in a private ceremony at the White House.

The recipients include writers, historians, educators, and filmmakers. Presentation of the medals was followed by a reception “with remarks by President Biden, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, National Endowment for the ...Read More

Diana Pho has been promoted to editorial director at Erewhon Books. Pho posted on social media,

Marking my upcoming 2-year anniversary at the company, I’m so, so thrilled to announce that I have been promoted…. Grateful to have the support from the Erewhon and Kensington Publishing teams as we level up!

Pho joined the company as executive editor in 2022. This promotion follows the departure of publisher Sarah Guan earlier ...Read More

Updated 10/29/24 to add ASFS statement and 10/31/24 to add Ekpeki statement.

Multiple allegations of unethical and unprofessional behavior on the part of Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki have recently come to light, including in this report by author and editor Erin Cairns, and through comments by other industry professionals on social media. From Erin Cairns’ report: “I am reporting Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki for unethical practices. He submitted a story entirely written ...Read More

On 10/27/2024, the Board met to discuss multiple ethics complaints regarding Director-at-Large Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki after hearing statements from various parties involved. Mr. Ekpeki was also given a chance to speak to the Board regarding these complaints. After due consideration, and in compliance with Article V(5)(iii) of the SFWA Bylaws, the Board voted unanimously to remove Director-at-Large Ekpeki from his position on the SFWA Board of Directors for good and sufficient cause, effective immediately.

The Board will not be answering questions on this matter to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

The post SFWA Board Statement on Removal of a Director-at-Large appeared first on SFWA.

Carlos Hernandez, Edward Zuckerman, Rob Cameron, A.C. Wise read at the Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room in Industry City, Brooklyn NY on September 17, 2024 as part of the Brooklyn Books & Booze Reading series, hosted by Randee Dawn.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like ...Read More

Winners for the 2024 Geffen Awards for best science fiction and fantasy published in Hebrew were announced by the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy at Icon, held October 20-22, 2024 in Tel Aviv Israel.

Best Translated Fantasy Book

• The Hidden Legacy: Sapphire Flames, Emerald Blaze, Ruby Fever, Ilona Andrews, translated by Yael Achmon (Alma & Ahavot)

Best Translated Science Fiction Book

• The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin,

...Read More

Light Bringer Project and Omega Sci-Fi have announced that the Roswell and New Suns Climate Fiction awards are on indefinite hiatus.

Omega Sci-Fi is celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, and will continue their two youth competitions, The Tomorrow Prize and The Green Feather Award. Submissions for both awards are open through February 14, 2025.

This year’s competition will come to a close during the Celebrity Readings and Honors event ...Read More

Finalists for the 2023 Kitschies, awarded for “the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining fiction that contains elements of the speculative or fantastic,” have been announced.

The directors of the award have announced that this, their 15th year, will “be the final year of the prize, citing the increased time-commitment required both of the prize’s administrators and its judges. They note, however, that this year’s diverse lists make the perfect ...Read More

by Anneke Schwob

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a rolling series, Writing from History, in which creators share professional insights related to the work of using historical elements in fictional prose.

I’ve spent a lot of time in archives and special collections: parsing handwritten letters, transcribing diaries, puzzling over telegraphs and radio transmissions. I was trying to write a dissertation. But inside the climate-controlled sterility of the reading room, I got lost instead, poring through a vast accumulation of details, swept up in the endless messy traces of human life. That willingness to become immersed wasn’t necessarily a good quality for a would-be academic. But now, some years later, I find myself reconsidering my time in the archives through the lens of writing fiction.

In this article, I’ll make the case for archival research as a tool for SFF writers. I’ll explain broadly what archives are and how to use them. But before diving into the how, I first want to spend a minute on the why.

Archives as Story Engines

Primary sources capture a wealth of specifics that most secondary sources necessarily elide. But archival research can be about much more than nailing the details. What if we approach the archives as a way to open gaps in our understanding–gaps into which story can enter—rather than close them?

One of my favorite anecdotes about archival research comes from historian Jill Lepore. Lepore was going through the papers of Noah Webster, who you may know from dictionaries. She begins by describing a fairly typical day: opening folder after folder and finding nothing particularly remarkable in any of them. Sometimes it’s like that. 

She moves to the next folder—Box 3, Folder 18—expecting more of the same. Opening it, she discovers instead a lock of Noah Webster’s hair, cut by his daughter Eliza as a keepsake. Lepore is briefly overcome.

“Noah Webster was a miserable, irascible man,” she writes. “But his daughter had loved him.”

This story, about Eliza Webster cutting her father’s hair and slipping it into an envelope, where it would wait 200 years for Jill Lepore to empty it into her hand, isn’t about the archive’s power to change our understanding of history. Nothing new was learned, really. Not about Noah Webster, Eliza, or 19th-century practices of creating mementos. (They were obsessed with hair as keepsakes, but we already knew that.) Rather, it’s a story about how one historian briefly experienced everything that the archive couldn’t capture: a living moment between father and daughter, itself only one moment in two whole lifetimes full of them. 

To me, that vast space of possibility is where the story lives.   

If you too are interested in exploring those spaces of possibility, some orientation may help make the dive less intimidating.  

What Are Archives?

Put simply—too simply—an archive exists to collect and preserve historical material. Often, though not exclusively, archives gather written traces of the past: letters, manuscripts, official records. (Though it’s worth noting that many special collections also include visual material such as photographs, or even physical objects—the Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin famously holds Edgar Allen Poe’s actual desk.) 

By nature, archives preserve a much more complex and messy history than that written into narrative. That detail and scope can make archives an important tool for reinterpreting or recontextualizing the past, in fiction or nonfiction. Archival research can draw attention to voices and narratives that have been forgotten. But archives aren’t inherently radical or even neutral. Power and privilege continue to shape decisions about what is collected, and that same power, privilege, and legacies of oppression can affect the way those collections are handled and described. 

Accessing the Archive

The Society of American Archivists lists a series of resources that can help you figure out where archival materials are held.

Before visiting an archive in person, familiarize yourself with its specific policies and procedures around accessing materials. There are some constants: most will only allow you to write with pencil, no archive is going to let you bring snack crumbs around their first-edition Leaves of Grass, etc. But each has quirks about things like technology in the reading room, how to put in requests for documents, and reproduction of archival material.

Visiting a physical archive may not be possible for reasons of distance, cost, or accessibility. Poring over papers in rooms that always seem too bright or too dark and, invariably, universally, too cold (anything to keep the books happy), is both physically and mentally taxing. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that archival research itself is out of reach. Many archives have digitized large portions of their collections. Others will happily dispatch research assistants to scan documents and deliver them digitally.

But many collections are so large that their scope is described not just in folders or boxes but in linear feet. (The Ursula K. Le Guin collection at the University of Oregon, for example, is 140 linear feet—the length of half a football field.) So whether you’re visiting in person or trying to access documents online, how do you know which specific items to request? 

Enter the finding aid. A finding aid (sometimes called a collection guide) is a digital road map to a collection’s holdings. Usually hosted on an institution’s website, a finding aid describes a collection’s broad historical and thematic scope as well as, crucially, what it doesn’t contain. They also provide an inventory of folders and boxes, with brief descriptions of what might be found in each. The finding aid for the Le Guin papers, for instance, tells us that the collection includes material related to both her career as an author and her private life. Further, it divides its materials into broad categories, such as correspondence, literary works, personal papers, and so on. The divisions aren’t always perfect, but they save time: a visitor looking for Le Guin’s handwritten draft of A Wizard of Earthsea is unlikely to be waylaid by her Master’s thesis.

The other great secret to archival success really shouldn’t be a secret at all: the archivists and research librarians who keep the whole show running. One constant among almost every librarian and archivist I’ve talked to is that they love to be asked. Many of them know their collections intimately and will be delighted to help you find material to work with. 

Once you have your documents, sit with them. Let yourself get a little lost. Experience the stories you’re being told, as much as possible without the pressure of preconceived interpretation. Let the gaps emerge. Eventually, the story will rush in.

Anneke is a lapsed academic, former robot impersonator, and lifelong enjoyer of the weird and fantastic. Their fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons and Baffling and is forthcoming from Nocturne and Kaleidotrope. In addition to their fiction, they have written on pulp SF and Antarctic exploration and are part of the review team at GrimDark magazine. Anneke can most often be found on a rocky shoreline, a cursed bog, or online at annekeschwob.info. Technically, though, they live in Montreal.

The post Using Archives to (Re)Write History appeared first on SFWA.

It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken (New Directions) is the winner of the third Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which includes a $25,000 cash prize, given “to a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction” and presented by the Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust.

The judges called the book

a work of quietly detonative imagination. Written in the guise of a ...Read More