About The Willows

Founded in 2007 to give a voice to a unique but neglected corner of horror literature, The Willows strives to publish only the best in true classic-style weird fiction.

Below is a letter from the editor, which sums up our position in the marketplace:

The Willows will occasionally skirt the borderlands of Horror, though its provinces of Gore and Violence are largely unmapped within these pages. We may dabble in Fantasy and Science Fiction, but the realms of elves and unicorns, of space-beings and faraway planets, are explored far more fully in numerous other esteemed publications.

When I settle down beside the fire in my library, my hand always strays first to those tales that evoke awe, wonder, and a childlike yearning for the unknown; it is these stories which shall feature most prominently here. To eerie fields and abandoned manors, across the aether and deep beneath the sea, we will travel together.

Our guides will be the authors whose work we have selected from a tremendous pool of submissions. To those whose style is considered archaic by modern tastes, we welcome you home. And to those fine gentlemen and ladies who have thanked me for providing an outlet for their misunderstood work, I offer a most hearty welcome.

My end is not profit or fame, but passion: I long to provide a gathering-place for other writers with tastes akin to mine; outcasts of modern fiction. I hope we may all enjoy the pleasure of one another's society.

This is a magazine for the true modern traditionalists, the disciples of writers long-dead, those who yearn for a time and culture that passed away decades before their birth. This is The Willows, and so far as I have anything to say about it, its style shall remain proudly, uncompromisingly unique among all publications!

~ Ben Thomas, Editor