The Dark is currently running a Kickstarter to fund their next two years, raise author pay rates, and cross off other important wish list items. Please check out the nice list of rewards and consider making a pledge before April 4th. They are one of my very favorite publishers of short fiction for a few reasons, enough to warrant a bullet list, in fact!

• Diversity. A truly impressive percentage of authors published in The Dark’s pages are women and people of color. In a publishing world that is slowly changing for the better, editors Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Sean Wallace are ahead of the curve.
• Free reading! All issues of The Dark can be read for free online. There’s no paywall, just great stories. As an author, I doubly appreciate being published by them. It’s great to have a few stories available that cost nothing more than a click. Subscriptions are available, too, and well worth the investment to support an essential venue.
• Aesthetic. Creepy, weird, beautiful, literary, emotional, unclassifiable, compelling…The Dark is one of the few fiction magazines I never miss an issue of. I’ve yet to read a story that wasn’t at the very least interesting.
• Audio versions. Narrator Kate Baker does an incredible job translating a couple of stories from each issue into wonderful performances.

Just to name a few. I hope you’ll help them hit their main goal and a stretch goal or two so we can all enjoy more incredible stories. And while you’re at it, keep an eye out for my story “The Pine Arch Collection,” coming to The Dark in May.