These things seem to come around before you know it, don't they?
It's been a busy year for Strange Horizons. We kicked off 2011 with a new schedule and an increased pay rate for fiction. New columnists Vandana Singh, Genevieve Valentine, Robyn Fleming, and Mark Plummer have joined veterans John Clute, Matthew Cheney, and Karen Healey. We've published special issues showcasing the work of Nisi Shawl, Carol Emshwiller, and, this week, Pat Cadigan. The blog has been more active, featuring biweekly Horizontal Connections link round-ups, plus The SF Count (following which we've gained some great new reviewers).
Stories published in Strange Horizons in 2010 have been picked up for four Year's Best anthologies and nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon, James Tiptree Jr., Locus and Aurealis Awards. You can peruse this year's stories (so far!) in our archives, and as ever we're particularly pleased to welcome new writers to the magazine—this year including David M. deLeon, Kelly Jennings, Shaenon K. Garrity and Liz Argall. We've seen new poetry from Shweta Narayan, Jo Walton, Mary A. Turzillo and many others. Finally, we've embarked on the process of upgrading and revamping our website.
And now it's time for our annual fund drive! Over the next few weeks, we'll be asking you to donate to the magazine, to help us raise funds for the next year.
It's a cliche to say that we couldn't do what we do without you, our readers, but it's also true. We couldn't do it without our contributors, either—or our staff, who volunteer so many hours of their time—but it's your donations that enable us to pay professional rates and to publish so much great material each week.
We accept donations all year round, but our annual fund drive is when we raise most of our income. As usual, you can find information about how to donate on our fund drive page, and all donors will be entered into a draw to win one of a range of fantastic prizes generously donated by readers, contributors, and supporters of the magazine. We'll be announcing new prizes throughout the fund drive, so do check back to see what's new each week—but already listed are novels by Carrie Ryan, Benjamin Parzybok, and Ayize Jama-Everett, collections by L. Timmel Duchamp and Joel Best, a limited-edition hardback of the Machine of Death anthology, and a complete subscription to the brilliant Twelve Planets series of mini-collections from Twelve Planet Press (worth AUS$180!).
You can also support the fund drive by tweeting, tumblring, or even old-fashioned blogging about it. And if you go the latter route, you can now embed our progress rocket in your post, to link people directly to the donations page, and make it easy to see how the fund drive is going.
The SF community is an amazing thing, and not short of initiatives worthy of your support—just this year we've seen another successful Con or Bust auction, plus fund-raisers for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards and the World SF Travel Fund. But if you like what you've been reading at Strange Horizons, and can afford to donate, please do consider sending some money our way. $5 or $500, every donation is hugely appreciated! And then our contributors can keep doing what they do best.