Ann Vandermeer has been named Weird Tales' new Fiction Editor and will take over with issue #347.
Weird Tales has been around forever, and it's one of the markets I've always wanted to get published in because how cool would it be to be part of a tradition that includes H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury and Robert E. Howard?
VanderMeer's a good and interesting choice - not to mention that as a female writer, I'm glad to see another female editor appearing.
Facts taken from the press release: She's been a publisher and editor for over twenty years, running her Buzzcity Press. Work from her press and related periodicals has won the British Fantasy Award, the International Rhysling Award, and appeared in several year's best anthologies. In addition, she has been a partner with her husband, Jeff VanderMeer, on such editing projects as the World Fantasy Award-winning Leviathan series and the Hugo finalist The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases. A Best of the Silver Web is forthcoming from Prime Books. Currently, she is serving as one of the guest editors for the new Best American Fantasy, and is co-editing anthologies including The New Weird (Tachyon Publications), Fast Ships, Black Sails (Nightshade Books), Last Drink Bird Head, and Love-Drunk Book Heads.
VanderMeer will be accepting fiction submissions via email beginning March 6 at weirdtales@gmail.com. Writers lacking email capabilites are welcome to send hardcopy submissions to her, attn: Weird Tales, P.O. Box 38190, Tallahassee, FL 32315. Updated submission guidelines will be available online as of March 1 at www.weirdtalesmagazine.com.
Sci-Fi.com has an interview with her here, in which she talks about her philosophy for the magazine:
"So ... what does make a Weird story?" she said. "Whereas a science fiction or high-fantasy story makes you go 'wow!' and a horror story makes you go 'ewww!' a Weird Tales story should leave you, simply, speechless. Because you've never heard anything like that before."
Good stuff. Good stuff indeed.
