Best American Fantasy 4 Now Reading: Guest Editor, Award-Winner Minister Faust
(Cover by John Coulthart)
Feel free to spread these guidelines far and wide…
BEST AMERICAN FANTASY #4 NOW READING
The Best American Fantasy series (Underland Press) founded by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer is now reading fantasy short stories up to 10,000 words published or to be published from May 1, 2009 through May 31, 2010 for volume 4.
Stories must be by Latin American or North American residents and published in Latin American or North American publications (or magazine websites) during the May-to-May period. All work must have been published in English to be eligible.
Guest Editor: Minister Faust
The guest editor for BAF4 is critically acclaimed writer Minister Faust. The guest editor for volume 5 will be Pulitzer Prize winner Junot DÃaz and the guest editor for volume 6 will be World Fantasy Award finalist Catherynne M. Valente. Each of these guest editors will bring excellence, expertise, and their own unique perspective to the position.
Announcing New Editors
BAF is proud to announce that the new series editor for BAF4 is reviewer and critic Larry Nolen, with translator/writer Fábio Fernandes serving as head of Latin American acquisitions and writer Alan Swirsky serving as first reader for online venues.
BAF founders Ann and Jeff VanderMeer will remain as managers/administrators of the anthology series, while former series editor Matthew Cheney will stay on as an advisor. Clayton Kroh and Tessa Kum will serve as assistant editors for BAF beginning with volume 4.
How to Submit Stories
—All relevant print publications and anthologies published in North America should be sent by the publishers to: Larry Nolen, BAF Series Editor, 151 Few Road, Dickson, TN 37055 USA.
—Editors of online publications based in North America should send relevant URLs to the first reader for online publications, Alan Swirsky (jynxshot@gmail.com).
—Editors of online publications based in Latin America should send relevant URLs to Fábio Fernandes (zeroabsoluto@gmail.com), while editors of print publications based in Latin America should query Fernandes about how best to send in eligible work.
—If you have already sent your print publication or anthology to either Matthew Cheney or Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, the materials will be forwarded to the series editor and do not need to be sent again.
As and when possible, and keeping in mind constraints such as expense and a need for additional personnel, the Best American Fantasy series eventually hopes to consider material published in Spanish and Portuguese.
Visit http://bestamericanfantasy.com/ for the Best American Fantasy 3 table of contents, guest editor Kevin Brockmeier. BAF3 will be published by Underland in mid-February 2010.
More Information on BAF Editors
Guest editor Minister Faust is an Edmontonian writer, community broadcaster and organiser. His second critically-acclaimed novel was the winner of the 2007 Carl Brandon Society Kindred award, and was the runner-up for the Philip K. Dick Award. His first novel was hailed by The New York Times Review of Books, and was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Locus Best First Novel award and the Compton-Crook award, and made several year’s best lists, including those for Amazon, Barnes & Noble, January Magazine, and SFSite.com.
Series editor Larry Nolen is a history and English teacher who devotes much of his spare time to reading and translating interviews and articles from Spanish into English. Since 2004, he has been blogging at the literary fantasy site, OF Blog of the Fallen. He also has had his reviews, interviews, and columns published at the Nebula Awards site, Strange Horizons, and Omnivoracious. In addition, several of his interviews and columns have been translated into Spanish and Portuguese and published in Spain and Portugal.
Latin American acquisitions editor Fábio Fernandes is a writer living in São Paulo, Brazil. Also a journalist and translator, he is responsible for the Brazilian translations of several prominent SF novels including Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and A Clockwork Orange. His short stories have been published in Brazil, Portugal, Romania, UK, New Zealand, and USA.Fernandes also published a non-fiction book on the work of William Gibson, A Construção do Imaginário Cyber, and an SF novel, Os Dias da Peste (both in Portuguese). In 2008, he created the SFF review blog Post-Weird Thoughts.
12 comments on “Best American Fantasy 4 Now Reading: Guest Editor, Award-Winner Minister Faust”
How long will your reading period be open?
Until the end of May of this year.
Not sure why you limit the series to Latin American and North American publications. Many Latin American authors are first published in European magazines but this means you won’t consider their work. Why not simply consider any work published in the time frame by a Latin American or North American resident?
Mary:
Because it’s too wide a scope. An antho needs to have a focus. It’s certainly in keeping with series like Best American Short Stories to have guidelines like these, although we’re definitely looking farther afield than that series. We re-evaluate every year, but at a certain point we’d be editing a Best World Fantasy antho, and that’s beyond our budget, for one thing.
How about praising us for what we *are* doing?
Jeff
So, hey, anyone out there *excited* about reading BAF3 or BAF4? Give it some love, folks. It’s by far the hardest project Ann and I work on, and takes the most energy and most physical stamina, for the least financial reward. And it’s the only antho of its kind out there.
That’s pretty cool that you make an effort to include Latin American publications. Sometimes we United States people think the world ends at our borders.
You’ve got an impressive line-up of editors there. I’m sure it’s going to be a great anthology.
I’m also excited the series is expanding to include Latin American publications. There’s a lot of exciting fantasy being published there, and it’s great these stories and authors will gain new exposure both in the U.S. and around the world. So bravo!
Actually don’t know yet whether there are a lot of English language journals in Latin America–we will find out. But it does at least mean Latin Americans in translation in North America are now eligible. If we hadn’t been emulating BASS so much we could’ve done that sooner.
Thanks, Kater.
>>The guest editor for volume 5 will be Pulitzer Prize winner Junot DÃaz.
This! SaWeet! Way cool to see the variety of editorial tastes. Look forward to the fiction!
Yes, I was actually thinking it is a step beyond to make America mean something more than the USA.
Jeff: Yes.
Many thanks… Still yet another fabulous way of looking at things, it is the reason I arrive to your blogging site over and over again..
Comments are closed.