Weird Tales editor Ann VanderMeer exits
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Ann VanderMeer will be leaving Weird Tales magazine, where she has been editor since early 2010. Before that, she was the magazine’s fiction editor.
VanderMeer has been a key figure in promoting dark, strange fiction that operates on the boundaries of fantasy and history, of science fiction, literary fiction and horror. A little steampunk, a little new weird. While VanderMeer was at Weird Tales it won its first Hugo Award, for best semiprozine.
In her goodbye, Vandermeer lists some of the authors she’s been proud to publish: Kathe Koja, Jeffrey Ford, Michael Bishop, Norman Spinrad, J. Robert Lennon, Ian MacLeod, Felix Gilman, Sarah Monette, Conrad Williams, Joel Lane and Stephen Graham Jones. Some of those will appear in an upcoming issue of Weird Tales, a roughly quarterly publication. The issue scheduled for February 2012 will be VanderMeer’s last.
The magazine has been bought by writer and editor Marvin Kaye, who says he’ll be taking over the editing reins himself. VanderMeer has a number of projects already in the works:
My current plans include final work on THE WEIRD: A Compendium of Dark and Strange Stories out from Atlantic in October. This huge reprint anthology, perhaps the largest ever published for this kind of fiction, includes 116 stories from the last one hundred years and totals 750,000 words. I will also be shepherding the anthology ODD? to completion through my and my husband’s e-book imprint Cheeky Frawg, along with completing several other anthology projects. In addition, I will continue to talk about and promote weird fiction through a new blog associated with THE WEIRD that will act as a repository of information and features, as well as providing a home for a new slate of “one-minute Weird Tales,” although they will of course be called something else. Beyond that I am considering this a chance to explore new and exciting opportunities.
VanderMeer’s husband and sometime collaborator is the writer Jeff VanderMeer, who has contributed to the L.A. Times book section.
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