The prelaunch for Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume Two Kickstarter is now live! Click here to be alerted as soon as the campaign begins. 

Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction is currently closed to submissions. Check back in January 2025 for submissions to Volume Three.

We are seeking fantasy and science fiction stories and poetry that were first published in 2023. Authors must be Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or ex-pats.

This is a reprint anthology, so we are not able to consider previously unpublished work.

We are also only able to consider works published in English. While we will be including stories in translation from French, we will seek those out ourselves.

We will consider fiction of 1500-ish words to 7500-ish words in length. If it’s over/under but in the ballpark, send it along. Fair warning: stories shorter than 1200 words or longer than 9,000 words will be a hard sell.

We will consider poems of any length but, fair warning, very short poems (e.g., haiku) will be a hard sell. Bonus points, though, for epic poetry! 😉

Our basic goal is to cast as wide a net as possible in seeking out the best Canadian fantasy and science fiction of the year. What we are particularly interested in seeing includes:

• F&SF that was published in major Canadian and US genre magazines/websites
• F&SF that came out from a small magazine/website or small press that it would be easy to have missed
• F&SF that appeared in single-author collections from Canadian writers
• F&SF that appeared in anthologies, Canadian or otherwise
• F&SF that appeared in international markets (i.e.: outside North America)
• F&SF published by early career or first-time authors
• F&SF published by authors from marginalized and/or traditionally under-represented populations
• F&SF written by Canadians from whom you wouldn’t typically expect genre stories
• F&SF that appeared in markets where you wouldn’t typically expect to find genre stories

Successful authors will receive 1 cent (0.01 CAD) per word for non-exclusive world English language reprint rights for fiction. Poetry will receive a $10 CAD reprint fee. All contributors will also receive one gratis copy of both the print and e-book of the anthology.

Please note: most markets will waive exclusivity periods for inclusion in Year’s Best anthologies, so please check your contract or speak with the editor if you’re unsure about reprint rights status.

If you have multiple publications from 2023, please feel free to send them all for consideration. You will need to submit each separately in Moksha, however.

While I personally tend toward the more optimistic, dark F&SF is welcome. And though we’re not primarily a horror market, we will consider horror that includes F&SF elements. Not interested if the point is blood and gore, but definite bonus points for creepy, eerie, or uncanny.

Submissions direct from authors: standard modern manuscript format (i.e.: italics are italics and not underlined, etc. – for details click here) and sent as a DOC, DOCX, or an RTF file. Please submit via our Moksha portal.

Submissions from publishers: feel free to send individual stories, full issues, or anthologies for consideration as PDF files. If your magazine or anthology contains both Canadian and non-Canadian contributors, or if it includes stories that are not SFF, please flag which stories/authors I should be considering. Please submit via our Moksha portal or directly via contact <@> kotowych <dot> com.

Please send only the final version of the work as published.

Please do not send just a link to a story if it was published online—we won’t click through.

Suggestions from readers: read something published in 2023 by a Canadian author and think I should take a look? Please drop me a line at contact <@> kotowych <dot> com. Please include the author’s full name, the full name of the story, and all details of the publication it appeared in (publication name, issue or volume number, publication date). Stories must meet all the eligibility criteria listed above to be considered.

We anticipate receiving a large number of stories and so we can only respond to authors whose work we take for the anthology. Thanks for your understanding.

You can submit your stories via our Moksha portal here.