The Year’s Best Fantasy: Volume One (Pyr, August 16, 2022). Cover by Liu Zishan

Paula Guran edited ten volumes of The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror for Prime Books between 2010-2019. She brought the series to Pyr in 2020, and it’s done well enough that this year Pyr launched a companion volume: The Year’s Best Fantasy: Volume One, also with Paula’s capable hand at the helm.

I’m delighted to see a brand new BEST OF series devoted exclusively to fantasy. This is a great volume to start with, containing a new Morlock tale by James Enge, AND a story by our first website editor C.S.E. Cooney (co-authored with her husband Carlos Hernandez), plus fiction from P. Djèlí Clark, Karen Joy Fowler, Sofia Samatar, E. Lily Yu, Isabel Yap, Catherynne Valente, Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Bear, and many others. It goes on sale next week.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

Marika Bailey, “The White Road; Or How a Crow Carried Death Over a River” (Fiyah #18)
Elizabeth Bear, “The Red Mother” (Tor.com)
Tobias Buckell, “Brickomancer (Shoggoths in Traffic and Other Stories)
P. Djèlí Clark, “If the Martians Have Magic” (Uncanny #42)
Roshani Chokshi, “Passing Fair and Young” (Sword Table Stone: Old Legend, New Voices)
Varsha Dinesh, “The Demon Sage’s Daughter” (Strange Horizons 2/8/21)
Andrew Dykstal, “Quintessence” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #324)
James Enge, “Drunkard’s Walk (F&SF 5-6)
Karen Joy Fowler, “The Piper” (F&SF 1-2)
Carlos Hernandez & C. S. E. Cooney, “A Minnow, or Perhaps a Colossal Squid (Mermaids Monthly, April)
Kathleen Jennings, “Gisla and the Three Favors” (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #43)
Allison King, “Breath of the Dragon King” (Fantasy #72)
PH Lee, “Frost’s Boy” (Lightspeed #128)
Yukimi Ogawa, “Her Garden the Size of Her Palm (F&SF 7-8)
Tobi Ogundiran, “The Tale of Jaja and Canti” (Lightspeed #135)
Richard Parks. “The Fox’s Daughter (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #344)
Karen Russell, “The Cloud Lake Unicorn” (Conjunctions:76)
Sofia Samatar, “Three Tales from the Blue Library” (Conjunctions:76)
Catherynne Valente, “L’Esprit de Escalier” (Tor.com)
Fran Wilde, “Unseelie Bros, Ltd.” (Uncanny #40)
Merc Fenn Wolfmoor, “Gray Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts” (Apex #121)
Isabel Yap, “A Spell for Foolish Hearts” (Never Have I Ever)
E. Lily Yu, “Small Monsters” (Tor.com)

Our previous coverage of the works of Paula Guran includes:

Swords Against Darkness edited by Paula Guran (2017)
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2017, edited by Paula Guran (2018)
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2018 edited by Paula Guran (2018)
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2019 edited by Paula Guran (2019)
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume One edited by Paula Guran (2020)
The Nexus Of Horror: An Interview With Paula Guran (2021)
Far Out: Recent Queer Science Fiction And Fantasy edited by Paula Guran (2021)

The Year’s Best Fantasy: Volume One will be published by Pyr Books on August 16, 2022. It is 456 pages, priced at $21.95 in paperback and $15.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Liu Zishan.

See all our coverage of the best upcoming SF and fantasy here.