CLOSED: Thinking Horror

This is no longer an ongoing market and has been posting open calls with deadlines.

Payment: Exact rate may differ between issues until feasible model is found. Payment at this time is $20 per article.

The unofficial theme of the magazine is “Why Horror?”

We are looking for non-fiction articles about the genre written by the people who generally think most about it.

Interested contributors must submit a short proposal to the editors outlining the proposed topic. It needn’t be long, just so long as it communicates the topic and the goals of the essay. This will help prevent repetition, or work on something that ultimately does not fit the journal’s intentions.

When imagining ideas for the journal, please keep in mind the idea of ‘timelessness’. In other words, material that would date the journal isn’t encouraged, unless a strong case can be made for it. The hope/goal of the journal is to have its issues remain releveant in perpetuity.

The sorts of articles we envision/encourage:
• analysis of specific authors and how their work illuminates the genre as a whole
• discussions of movements like Splatterpunk and New Weird
• essays on the different facets of horror (i.e. Nightmare Horror, Folk Horror)
• interviews with authors and editors about the genre and how it works, and its goals
• observational essays by writers and critics about how they view horror and what horror means to them

Essentially, we want to read a series of meditations on the genre, on what it means, on its history and its future. We want to see analysis from across the spectrum. We want this to be a premiere venue for horror and weird scholarship.

WORD COUNT: 1,000 words or more

PAYMENT: “Thinking Horror” is a paying market. Exact rate may differ between issues until feasible model is found. Payment at this time is $20 per article.

SUGGESTIONS: The editors would like to hear your ideas, but if you need help, any of the below would make for fascinating reading (where appropriate to issue theme):

• “A Thousand Black Eyes: The Masculinity of Horror in the Work of Cornell Woolrich.”
• “I Don’t Care if I’m Here Tomorrow: Exploring the Relationship Between Nihilism and Homosocial Concepts of Family in Post-Aids America Through the Work of Poppy Z. Brite.”
• “Blood Splattered Black Denim: Examining the Liminal Between the Contemporary Literatures of Crime and Horror.”
• “Bones, Bodies, and Clock Hands: Defining Depravity As Context Within A Longing for Place and The Socioeconomic Legacy of Jeffrey Dahmer in Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘Zombie’ and Poppy Z. Brite’s ‘Exquisite Corpse.’”
• “When They Do I’ll Be Right Behind You: Phobophobia and Phobophila in the Work of Ramsey Campbell.”
• “All the Dark You Can Stand: Nyctophobia and Nyctophilia in the Work of Laird Barron”
• “Every Little Thing Is Wrong/Wronged: Perception and the Rejection of an Authentic Reality in the Work of Terry Lamsley.”
• “Under Skin(s)- Cities of Bone and Muscle: Shifting Physicality as Manifestation of Queer Impulse in the Early Work of Clive Barker.”
• “What Burns Never Returns: The Spenserian Sublime and the Fable Structure in Simon Strantzas’ ‘These Last Embers.’”
• “We’ll See What We See: Animism, Animal Imagery, and the World Invisible in the Works of Peter Straub.”
• “Beyond the Past and the Past Beyond: The Intersection and Overlap of the Spectral and the Weird in Fritz Leiber’s ‘Our Lady of Darkness.’”
• “Your Son Consumed, Your Daughter Drowned: The Rhetoric of Paternal Death Anxiety in the Work of Tim Lebbon.”

Via: Thinking Horror.