The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror

Sorry to say that as of January 2009 this series has ceased.

“This is the anthology to pick up every year if you want to read the best short fiction from the previous year and get overviews of the best fiction, non-fiction, films and video, animie, and music that was released in that year”
Green Man Review

“These books define the absolute best contemporary fantasy and horror for me and for a whole generation.”
—Holly Black, bestselling author of the Spiderwick Chronicles

For more than 20 years The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror was the definitive anthology of the fantastic. The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror is divided into two halves: horror and fantasy. Ellen Datlow edits the horror half. After sixteen years as Datlow’s co-editor, Terri Windling turned the fantasy half over to us (Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant) in 2002.

Each year we read almost 3,000 stories worth of genre magazines, online zines, collections, and original anthologies. Out of this reading, we selected 130,00 words of the best fiction and poetry in the fantastic tradition. We looked for stories drawing on a broad range of the fantastic tradition, from heroic fantasy, fairy tales, comic fantasy, and dark fantasy to the surreal or interstitial. Authors whose work has appeared in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror include Margo Lanagan, Delia Sherman, Garth Nix, Joe Hill, Isabel Allende, Gregory Maguire, and China Mieville. Each volume included an introduction that reviewed the best novels and books of the previous year, from short story collections to young adult, as well as an essential survey of magazines, websites, and small presses, and a list of honorable mentions: stories worth seeking out.

“These dedicated editors play a crucial role in bringing the best new works to fans who don’t always read far afield. . . . As the line between fantasy and horror blurs, this combined presentation of their exemplars will give readers of both genres much to enjoy, and may even broaden a few horizons.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Year’s Best updates