For nearly a decade, Uncanny Magazine has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the upcoming year’s worth of fiction and nonfiction, and has just launched (and reached its funding goal) for its eighth year.
Uncanny has been around since 2014, and in that time, it has become a heavyweight publication that has featured tons of well-known and up and coming authors in its table of contents. Its stories have racked up some impressive accolades as well: Hugo Awards for Best Semiprozine (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020), for Best Novelette, and Professional Editor, as well as plenty of others. The magazine is run by co-editors-in-chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.
This year’s campaign goal was $18,700, and as of the moment, it’s well-surpassed that at $19,509. In their pitch for the year, the Thomases note that they’ve got stories lined up from Maurice Broaddus, Rae Carson, John Chu, C.L. Clark, S.B. Divya, A.T. Greenblatt, Carlos Hernandez, Steven Graham Jones, Fonda Lee, Maureen McHugh, C.L. Polk, Kelly Robson, and John Wiswell, essays from Keidra Chaney, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Gay Haldeman, Jim C. Hines, Jeannette Ng, Greg Pak, and Rebecca Romney, and poetry from Linda D. Addison, Tenille K Campbell, Millie Ho, Ewen Ma, Brandon O’Brien, Terese Mason Pierre, and Dominik Parisien. The publication will also be open for unsolicited submissions at some point in the near future.
This year’s funding will go towards 25,000 new words of fiction, a reprint, cover art, new poems, essays, and interviews in each bimonthly issue. The magazine is known for paying writers a good word rate: $.10 new / $.02 reprint, $40 a poem, $100 an essay, and $125 for art. The money also goes towards paying the magazine’s staff, hosting, and other logistical needs and fees.
Now that the magazine’s surpassed its goals (it more than doubled its goals last year), their stretch goals for this year include new cover art from Galen Dara, Kirbi Fagan, and Paul Lewin, pay bumps for their editors, and flash fiction for each issue.
Backing tiers range from $10 (ebook copies of the first two issues in Year 8), $26 (subscription for year 8), $100 (autographed books from various authors, workshops, blog post, personal microfiction, and more), and fiction critiques ($300/$400 levels).
The campaign runs for the next month—it will end on August 26th at 8PM eastern time.
