Wendy N. Wagner is a powerhouse of cool stuff. In addition to serving as Editor-in-Chief of Nightmare Magazine and the Managing/Senior Editor of Lightspeed Magazine, she also kayaks, gardens, and writes acclaimed poetry, essays, short stories, and novels. Her new novel, Girl in the Creek (Tor Nightfire), will be out in July.
Thanks to Wendy for answering my questions & showing us her adorable pets!
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Myna: Tell us about Nightmare Magazine! What sort of material do you publish? How long has the magazine been around? What’s the best way for readers to access the magazine?
Wendy: Nightmare Magazine was founded back in 2012—John Joseph Adams was the original editor in chief, and very shortly after its establishment, he also took over as publisher. We started out publishing a mix of horror and dark fantasy original short fiction and reprints, but in 2021, when I took over as editor, we pivoted to all original content that includes short fiction, flash, and poetry. (We also publish the occasional bit of creative nonfiction.) Nightmare is also well-known for its nonfiction columns, especially our “The H Word” essay column.
You can read Nightmare’s content on our website, but if you prefer to read on an e-reader, we have reasonably priced subscriptions where we’ll deliver an issue to your inbox in ebook form the first of every month. You can find more information about subscribing here.
We also podcast all our fiction and poetry! You can find us on all the usual podcast platforms, like Spotify and iTunes, but you can also check out our website.
Myna: What are you looking for in fiction and poetry submissions? Are there any styles or themes that you especially like? Any that you see too often?
Wendy: I like work that is full of humanity—there’s a distinct, rich voice and a sense of a narrator who is deeply invested in the events unfolding on the page. I’m also drawn to work that goes in new, thrilling directions. I like work that’s weird (in fact, I love Weird fiction) or even bizarre (or heck, bizarro). In poetry, rhyming is often a hard sell, unless its rhymes in the service of being strange or weird. I’m always looking for formal poetry that captures the darker human experiences in interesting ways, and we rarely see any.
In general, Nightmare is a place to explore the dark elements of the world, and that doesn’t necessarily mean just scary. I’d say that in our shorter work especially, we are eagerly seeking work that pushes the boundaries of the horror genre. That said, we tend to see a lot of speculative-leaning work, and I’d love to see more straight-up horror stories. Psychological horror or slasher stories rarely cross my desk. Go ahead and try to scare us!
Myna: I’d love to know more about the nonfiction in Nightmare. What are you looking for? Should writers query before submitting nonfiction?
Wendy: I used to take queries for nonfiction at Nightmare, but I’ve had to put that on pause after getting a deluge of submissions over the last few months.
Myna: I love the Nightmare podcast. It’s so great to be able to listen to the stories while I’m working! I’m curious about how that all comes together. Do you manage the process? Is it time consuming to coordinate?
Wendy: I wish I could tell you more about that! I just pick the content, and then our publisher works with Skyboat Media to make all the magic happen. It’s as mysterious to me as it is to you.
Myna: Tell us about the awards and nominations Nightmare’s stories have garnered!
Wendy: We’ve been very lucky over the years! We’ve had stories win the Nebula, Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Eugie awards, and we’ve had stories nominated for all those awards, plus also the Hugo, World Fantasy, Ignyte, Parsec, and Locus awards. We’ve had essays nominated for the Stoker award; we’ve had a poem win the Aurora award. Last year, we had one story—“The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones—nominated for five different major awards! You can see a list of our recognitions here.
Myna: Tell us about your role. What takes the most time? What is your favorite part of this job? I’d also like to hear about the work you do for Lightspeed!
Wendy: I started working for Adamant Press as the managing/associate editor for both Lightspeed and Nightmare, which means I was in charge of helping edit and select fiction at both magazines, and I was in charge of making sure every staff member and volunteer got all their parts of the magazines polished and turned in on time, as well as uploading everything to our website and creating the first draft of our ebooks. Then I started assigning and editing the nonfiction at both magazines.
Once I started as editor in chief at Nightmare, I started to feel a little pinched for time, so I recently found some more hands to help out at Lightspeed (so grateful to our new nonfiction editor, Kevin Figueroa Quiñones, and new coordinating editor Leighanna DeRouren), so I can focus more on the horror side of things!
My favorite part of the process is definitely working with the authors on their stories. The editing process is such a wonderful chance to look at a piece of fiction and try to analyze what the writer is trying to do with their prose, while asking “Do I think these words are doing just what the writer wants them to do?” It’s fun to have those conversations with writers, and I really appreciate getting to learn more about each writer and their process. I just really love writers!
Myna: I know you’ve edited some very cool anthologies. What can you tell us about those?
Wendy: My main “anthology” editing credit is that I edited a special issue of Nightmare Magazine, Queers Destroy Horror!, and I managed the entire Destroy series, which you can read about here.
Myna: Tell us about your career trajectory. How did you get here?
Wendy: I always wanted to be a writer, and I started getting serious about writing in my late twenties. I wrote a few novels and started connecting with other writers back in the early days of Twitter (RIP), but I felt like I wasn’t progressing quickly enough, so I thought I’d try my hand at short fiction. My first professional sale was to John Joseph Adams (JJA), who selected one of my stories for his anthology The Way of the Wizard. At the same time, my friend Christie Yant started volunteering with JJA at Lightspeed. She told me JJA was looking for an editorial assistant to help with some production tasks involved with The Way of the Wizard, so I jumped in. John brought me on as an editorial assistant for two more anthologies (Brave New Worlds and The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination), teaching me how to read submissions, write introductions, and build a table of contents. It was a tremendous way to learn!
In 2011, I spent a year working with JJA as the assistant editor of Fantasy Magazine, and then I took some time off to focus on my freelance writing career. But in 2014, he reached out to me to see if I wanted to help out with Lightspeed and Nightmare, and the rest is history!
Cover art by Greg Ruth.
Myna: I’m a big fan of your fiction and poetry. It seems you’re equally at home with many forms and genres. Which format is your favorite? What themes do you explore? Where can we read your work?
Wendy: That is so wonderful to hear! Thank you!
I love writing, no matter the shape or the size. There’s just nothing as satisfying as sculpting words into something that people can dive inside. I’m also at my happiest when I’m writing, so I really like to do it every day. Needless to say, I really appreciate working on a novel, since it requires pretty much daily discipline and hands-on work. But then again, short work is like a condensed blast of enjoyment, so I love working on them, too! I guess I just can’t choose a favorite.
I’m really inspired by a sense of place. I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest my entire life, and its history and nature are both constant inspirations. Because of that, most of my work is centered around nature, animals, and our relationships to the world around us. I also studied philosophy when I was in college, and I was pretty fascinated by the philosophy of mind and language. I think that might show in my work.
My SF novel An Oath of Dogs, definitely reflects that interest in the philosophy of language, and in my love of animals and nature. It’s set on a world covered with giant trees and is about a woman and her therapy dog! My horror novels The Deer Kings and Girl in the Creek (out from Tor Nightfire in July) are both set in Oregon in rural communities, and are focused around the terrible things that can happen in small towns when people think their wicked behaviors can go hidden. The Deer Kings has more of a supernatural focus, with psychic kids and supernatural entities, while Girl in the Creek includes a weird, mind-controlling fungus. All of these books are available wherever books are sold, like Powell’s.com and Bookshop.org.
Myna: Do you have a personal theme song?
Wendy: Ever since I started trying to get published, my personal theme song has been Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping,” a song famous for its chorus: “I get knocked down / but I get up again / you’re never gonna keep me down.” Anyone who has ever sent their writing out in the world knows that rejection is common and that it hurts. You can’t let rejection stop you from creating.
And while I first started using that theme song just in the realm of writing, the more I sing it to myself, the more it applies to just about everything!
Myna: Do you have a pet or other hobbies/activities? Show us a picture!
Wendy: I live with a very lazy, bossy, large, fluffy calico cat named Alice and a small, anxious, loving dog named Beansy. I am a terrible gardener who deeply enjoys growing native and edible plants, mostly for the benefit of the local wildlife (although I get the occasional strawberry and plum the critters save for me!). I also deeply enjoy being out in nature—I like trail running, hiking, backpacking, and I’m getting into kayaking.
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Wendy N. Wagner is a hiker, trail runner, and nature lover. She’s the author of the horror works Girl in the Creek (forthcoming July 2025 from Tor Nightfire), The Deer Kings, and The Secret Skin, and the SF thriller An Oath of Dogs. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon and Shirley Jackson awards, and her short stories, poetry, and essays have appeared in more than seventy venues. She serves as the editor-in-chief of Nightmare Magazine (for which she’s a two-time Locus Best Editor award-nominee) and is part of the Hugo award-winning editorial team behind Lightspeed Magazine. She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family, a large cat, and a Muppet disguised as a dog.
Find Wendy at her website, on Bluesky, on Instagram, and Patreon.
You can preorder a signed copy of Girl In the Creek from Broadway Books!
And check out Nightmare Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and the magazines’ Patreon.
Myna Chang 