Psychopomp is relaunching Fantasy Magazine!!
I wanted to write a whole fancy thing about this, but I’m just too excited, so I’ll stick to the straightforward story:
I was super bummed to hear Fantasy was closing. I know many people reading this were as well.
I immediately reached out to John Joseph Adams (publisher of Fantasy at the time it closed) to see if it was a possible to pick up Fantasy Magazine where they left off in October 2023.
Why?
Because I love Fantasy, the magazine.
I also love fantasy the genre.
I love publishing things and figured this could be a fun project. I’d launched a magazine from scratch already (The Deadlands), I thought it’d be a different kind of adventure to continue publishing one that had a big history and was in motion.
John wrote back and said he wasn’t yet ready to sell (and as a publisher, I totally get this).
Consequently, Arley Sorg (co-editor of Fantasy Magazine from 2020 to 2023) reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in creating a magazine with him, as he enjoyed his role at Fantasy.
Me? Sure! I said. I love publishing things!
We chatted for a few months and Arley wanted to bring on a co-editor, that was the model Fantasy had used for the past few years and he liked a lot about it.
“I want to ask Shingai Kagunda if she’d like to be co-editor.”
Shingai? Sure! I said. I love Shingai—we’re publishing a novelette by her later this year.
Long story short, Shingai said yes (“YES!!!“) and we worked on putting together a new magazine.
But Then
But then! In October 2024 I reached out to John pretty randomly and said “how about now.”
He was open to it, and after checking that Arley and Shingai were interested in taking on the co-Editor-in-Chief roles at Fantasy, I quickly worked out a deal to acquire Fantasy Magazine.
So here is Fantasy Magazine, risen from the dead once more (dramatic? Yes, but that’s my whole thing here at Psychopomp, Death!).
Everything You’ll Want To Know
Psychopomp will publish Fantasy Magazine on a quarterly schedule.
We plan to release our first issue June 1st.
You will be able to subscribe to Fantasy Magazine via email for $5 per quarter. When we release a new issue you’ll be sent the ePub. You’ll also receive new stories/poems/nonfiction in your inbox. A year’s sub will be $20, and you can pay it quarterly.
We will publish all of our stories/poems/nonfiction on the website for free, after an exclusive-to-subscribers period.
Digital issues will also be available at Psychopomp’s Grave Goods store (coming soon!), and on WeightlessBooks.com.
What happened to the Fantasy-Magazine.com website?
Right, you may have noticed that if you go to Fantasy-Magazine.com it forwards to Psychopomp.com/fantasy/
(You may have also noticed that TheDeadlands.com also forwards to its own page on Psychopomp.)
Managing more than one website is a huge, resource-intensive commitment. Keeping Psychopomp + The Deadlands working was maxing out my ability to troubleshoot issues and keep everything working. Adding in a whole third website—one we’d need to redesign so it didn’t look like Nightmare and Lightspeed is beyond our budget, so I made the decision to move everything here to the publisher’s site, Psychopomp.
Each magazine will have its own distinct home on Psychopomp—we’ll still publish one-off stories and essays on Psychopomp; meanwhile Fantasy Magazine and The Deadlands will publish content under their respective sections.
It might take a little getting used to, but this change will result in a much stronger overall experience for you, the reader.
All of the links out in the wild will still work, and still get you to the page you’re intending to click on, so it should be a painless transition. However, there will be some bugs to squash here and there, so please pardon our digital dust while we wrap this very big change up.
Currently, the first issue of Fantasy Magazine from Psychopomp is slated to go live on June 1st (but this is subject to change).
For writers:
We plan to have a brief submissions window soon, welcoming short fiction, flash fiction, and poetry.
You can read the submission guidelines here. We will share the submission link via the email list first.
If you’re interested in staying up to date about this, I encourage you to sign up for the Psychopomp email list here:
In addition to staying up to date about all things Fantasy Magazine, you’ll also receive updates about the stellar novellas, novelettes, and short stories we’re publishing at Psychopomp, as well as updates around The Deadlands. We’ll email you at most once per week, and always with cool things to share.
Fantasy Magazine will pay $0.10/word for fiction and $50/poem (same as The Deadlands).
A Final Note About The Reality Of Publishing Things
We need at least 335 subscribers to keep Fantasy Magazine going. We’re starting with zero, but I’ve seen how much the community loved what Fantasy was doing, the stories and poems they published, and I feel very strongly the support will be there.
Here’s how you can help!
Subscribe to Fantasy Magazine here.
There’s a lot of great things coming from Psychopomp in 2025—your support means we get to keep it going into 2026 and beyond!
Finally, please help spread the word about this exciting acquisition on Bluesky, you can find us here:
