Dark Horizons, published twice a year, is the critically acclaimed journal of the British Fantasy Society. It publishes fiction, poetry, articles and interviews. The current editor is Stephen Theaker. For the very latest information on submitting to this publication, please consult the Dark Horizons forum on the BFS website. There you’ll find updates on what we’re looking for at the moment, what we’re short of, and so on.

Fiction

Accepted material must be available to email, and an email address must be provided for our response, but all initial submissions must be sent on paper to: Stephen Theaker (Dark Horizons), 56 Leyton Road, Birmingham, B21 9EE, UK.

Manuscripts should be in standard MS format (double spaced, single side, etc); they must not be folded more than once when stuffed into an envelope (preferably not folded at all, especially MSS of five or more pages). If you would like the MS to be returned, please include an SSAE.

Please send any queries by email to the editor.

Poetry

Subject matter as for fiction; they should have a fantastic, weird, supernatural or mythical theme. Any form will be accepted with a maximum length of 36 lines.

Poetry submissions should be made via email to the editor. Please include them in the body of the email, not as an attachment.

Lengthy poems or sagas will be considered, but should follow instead the submission guidelines given above for fiction.

Non-Fiction

We are looking for anything that will interest the members of the British Fantasy Society, in particular interviews, overviews, critiques, biographies, histories, opinions, and so on. We do suggest you contact us before writing any very substantial article (either by letter or email), to check on suitability and available space. Our readers are generally quite knowledgable when it comes to fantasy, so don't be afraid to suggest topics slightly off the beaten track. All non-fiction should be sent directly to the editor by email. Reprints are welcome.

We would also like to introduce some new and regular non-fiction sections to the journal. These may or may not pan out – it will probably depend upon the kind and quality of submissions we receive. We're happy to admit that the idea is to channel some of the energy that goes into writing on forums and other websites into writing short pieces for our journal…

Castle Wailing: this section would be for short opinion, idea or polemic pieces, similar to the reader features that appear here. Do you have a brilliant idea that you want to push out into the world? A new way of looking at a book, an author or a programme? Perhaps a research proposal you’ve no intention of ever following up yourself?

Ruminations: this section would be for things that might once have been reviews, but carried on growing. While Dark Horizons does not publish reviews as a rule (short reviews of current books or films are included in the newsletter of the BFS, Prism), more in-depth considerations of individual titles, new or old, could appear here. Is there a book or a film that you just can’t get out of your head, to which you keep seeing new angles?

Note to Publishers

We are always on the lookout for suitable people to interview. We would also be interested in providing our readers with previews of forthcoming books, in particular of non-fiction titles. Previews could take the form of an extract, or (for example) a note from the author explaining the significance of his or her subject. Please contact the editor to discuss.

Artwork

A Bit of a Downer

The British Fantasy Society is a non-profit organisation and therefore DH is unable to pay for submissions (although the budget will stretch to a copy of the magazine for contributors who are not society members). However, you will be in good company: Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Louise Cooper, Stephen Gallagher, Brian Lumley, Mark Morris, Lisa Tuttle, Robert Holdstock and many others have all been published by the BFS.

You retain all rights to your work, allowing us only the right to distribute paper copies of the issue in which it appears. If at a later date your story is reprinted elsewhere, we would be grateful if a notice could be appended regarding its original publication in Dark Horizons.

By submitting a story, article or poem the writer assumes all responsibility with regard to potential copyright, libel, trade mark infringement or any other legal proceedings which might stem from its publication. With that in mind, please do not submit any stories featuring characters from films, tv shows, other people’s novels (unless the author died in the nineteenth century or earlier), etc.

Response Times

Since Dark Horizons is only published twice a year (March and September, at present), we may have to hold onto a stories a little longer than we'd like before deciding whether to use them, especially since the space available for fiction in each issue is affected by how much non-fiction we manage to acquire. However, we will aim to acknowledge your submissions within two weeks.