Collective: The Collaborative Art of Anthologies
- Francesca T Barbini
- 8 hours ago
- 10 min read
Is it is with great pleasure that we welcome to the Luna Family, the editors and authors of Collective: The Collaborative Art of Anthologies, edited by Dan Coxon and Pete W Sutton.
As most of you know Academia Lunare is the speculative non-fiction arm of Luna Press, with which we go beyond the fiction. This time we are taking you behind the scene of anthology making. Most people cross path with anthologies through its stories, perhaps not fully aware of how such books come to life. Collective will take on the journey of creating anthologies, through the life and the experience of those who have made collaborations their expertiese.
And who best to guide us on this journey than editors Dan Coxon and Pete W Sutton! Collective will be out October 2026.
"As editors we've worked on lots of anthologies, and it occurred to us that there was very little written about the art of curation. Collective is an attempt to redress that absence, bringing together some of the most experienced and admired editors currently working in genre fiction to discuss the practicalities of what they do - from pitching ideas to publishers, to deciding on the sequence the stories should appear in. More than that, we've tried to cover different styles of anthology too, from the unthemed anthologies to writers' group publications and 'Best of Year' compilations. Alongside interviews with Ellen Datlow and Steve J. Shaw, we hope these essays give some idea of the complex and unpredictable process of putting an anthology together - and act as a celebration of some of genre fiction's unsung heroes."
Dan Coxon and Pete W Sutton
Let's discover our editors and contributors!
Introduction - Dan Coxon and Pete W Sutton
Dan Coxon has won a World Fantasy Award (Heartwood: A Mythago Wood Anthology) and two British Fantasy Awards (Writing the Uncanny and Writing the Future, both co-edited with Richard V. Hirst). He has been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Awards a total of eight times, and was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Awards. In October 2025 his anthology of haunted house stories, Unquiet Guests, was published by Dead Ink Books. His second short story collection, Come Sing for the Harrowing, will be reissued by CLASH Books in April 2026.
Pete W Sutton is a writer and editor. His two short story collections – A Tiding of Magpies and The Museum for Forgetting – were shortlisted for Best Collection in the British Fantasy Awards in 2017 & 2022 respectively. He has published two novels - Sick City Syndrome (now out of print) and Seven Deadly Swords, with a third novel to come. He has edited several short story anthologies and is the former editor for the British Fantasy Society’s Horizons fiction magazine.
Curating Creativity – Ann VanderMeer
Ann VanderMeer is an award-winning editor & anthologist. She currently serves as an acquiring editor for Reactormag.com. She was the editor-in-chief for Weird Tales, during which time she won the Hugo Award. Along with multiple other nominations, she has won a World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award and a British Fantasy Award for The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories. In addition to her editorial work, her non-fiction has been published widely, including essays for the British Library. Her latest anthologies include The Time Traveler’s Almanac, Sisters of the Revolution, The Big Book of Science Fiction, AVATARS, INC (an online XPRIZE anthology), The Big Book of Classic Fantasy and The Big Book of Modern Fantasy.
Two’s Company: Editing as a Couple – Paul Kane & Marie O’Regan
Paul Kane is the award-winning (including the British Fantasy Society’s Legends of FantasyCon Award 2022), bestselling author and editor of over a hundred and sixty books – such as the Arrowhead trilogy (gathered in the sellout Hooded Man omnibus), Hellbound Hearts, Wonderland (a Shirley Jackson Award finalist) and Pain Cages (an Amazon #1 bestseller). His non-fiction books include The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and Voices in the Dark. He has been a Guest at many conventions, as well as being a panellist at FantasyCon and the World Fantasy Convention, and a fiction judge at the Sci-Fi London festival. A former British Fantasy Society Special Publications Editor, he has also served as co-chair for the UK chapter of The Horror Writers Association and co-chaired ChillerCon UK in May 2022. His work has been optioned and adapted for the big and small screen, including for US network primetime television and as the feature film Sacrifice starring Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, You’re Next). His audio work includes the full cast drama adaptation of The Hellbound Heart for Bafflegab, starring Alice Lowe (Prevenge), and the Robin of Sherwood adventure The Red Lord for Spiteful Puppet/ITV. He has also contributed to the Warhammer 40k universe for Games Workshop. Paul’s latest novels are the sequels to RED – Blood RED & Deep RED (aka The RED Trilogy) – the award-winning hit Sherlock Holmes & the Servants of Hell, Before (an Amazon Top 5 dark fantasy bestseller), Arcana, The Storm and The Gemini Effect. In addition he writes thrillers for HQ/HarperCollins as PL Kane: Her Last Secret, Her Husband’s Grave and The Family Lie. Paul lives in Derbyshire, UK, with his wife Marie O’Regan. Find out more at his site www.shadow-writer.co.uk which has featured Guest Writers such as Stephen King, Catriona Ward, Dean Koontz, Olivie Blake and Guillermo del Toro.
Marie O’Regan is an award-winning author and editor, based in Derbyshire. She has released three short fiction collections, a bestselling novel, Celeste, and her fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies in several countries – including The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, and Best British Horror among others. To date, she has co-edited fifteen anthologies (several of which were award-nominated), and solo edited the bestselling TheMammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women and Phantoms. An ex-Chair of the British Fantasy Society and the UK Chapter of the Horror Writers Association, she also ran ChillerCon UK in Scarborough in May 2022. Marie is also Managing Editor of PS Publishing’s award-winning novella imprint, Absinthe Books, novellas from which have won the Shirley Jackson award (alongside several nominations) and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. It has also garnered several nominations for the British Fantasy Awards, the Aurealis Awards and the Bram Stoker™ Awards.
The Accidental Anthologist – Maxim Jakubowski
Maxim Jakubowski is a British writer and editor, who has worked for many years in publishing. A past columnist for Time Out and The Guardian, he has won the Karel, Anthony, Red Herrings and David L. Goodis awards for his work which includes 21 novels (10 of them under a pseudonym and Sunday Times bestsellers), 6 collections of short stories and over a 100 anthologies. A former Chair of the Crime Writers' Association and owner of the Murder One bookstore, he lives in London, surrounded by tens of thousands of books, CDs and DVDs. His daughter says he is hoarder; he disagrees, and prefers to be called a collector
Interview - Ellen Datlow
Ellen Datlow has been editing sf/f/h short fiction for over four decades. She was Fiction Editor of OMNI Magazine for seventeen years, then Editor of SCIFICTION, the fiction arm of the SCIFI Channel’s website for six years.
She currently acquires short stories For Reactor and novellas for Tor.com and its horror imprint, Nightfire. She has edited numerous anthologies for adults, young adults, and children, including The Best Horror of the Yearannual series, Christmas and Other Horrors, Night and Day, a two-part horror anthology modeled after the Ace Doubles,
and the reprint anthology Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror.
She’s won multiple Locus, Hugo, Stoker, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, and World Fantasy Awards plus the Splatterpunk Award, and in 2012 Il Posto Nero Black Spot Award for Excellence as Best Foreign Editor.
Datlow was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for "outstanding contribution to the genre" and was honored with the Life Achievement Award given by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career and honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention. The Shirley Jackson Awards, Inc. recently presented her with a special award in recognition of the anthology When Things Get Dark: Stories inspired by Shirley Jackson (Titan Books, 2021).
She runs the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series in the east village, NYC, with Matthew Kressel.
She can be found on the website Datlow.com, and on twitter, Blue sky, and facebook (google her).
Fear of the Unknown: Keeping the Non-Themed Horror Anthology Series Alive – Mark Morris
Mark Morris has written and edited over fifty novels, novellas, short story collections and anthologies, and his script work includes audio dramas for Doctor Who and the Hammer Chillers series. His most recent work includes the novel That Which Stands Outside, new audio adaptations of the 1971 horror movie Blood on Satan’s Claw and the M.R. James ghost story A View From a Hill, the BBC Books/Target novelization of the 60th anniversary Doctor Who special Wild Blue Yonder, and, as editor, six volumes of the ‘ABC of Horror’ series. Blood on Satan’s Claw won the New York Festival Radio Award for Best Drama Special, and A View From a Hill won the New York Festival Radio Award for Best Digital Drama Program, and was also awarded Silver at the 2020 Audio & Radio Industry Awards. Mark has won two British Fantasy Awards, and has been nominated for several Stokers and Shirley Jackson Awards. His next novel, to be published by Flame Tree Press, will be Bad Things Happen Here, and he is currently hard at work on the seventh volume of his acclaimed ‘ABC of Horror’ series, Ghost Lights.
The Most Lovely of Literary Necklaces: On Editing a Themed Anthology – Teika Marija Smits
Teika Marija Smits is a UK-based freelance editor, an editor-at-large at Valley Press, and the author of the short story collections Umbilical (NewCon Press), which was shortlisted for the 2024 Rubery Book Award, and Waterlore (Black Shuck Books), as well as the poetry pamphlet Russian Doll (Indigo Dreams Publishing). In 2024 she edited the We-inspired speculative fiction anthology The Utopia of Us (Luna Press Publishing) to celebrate the centenary of the first publication of Zamyatin’s We. Most recently, she was the winner of the British Fantasy Society’s Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer. She is delighted that ‘Teika’ means fairy tale in Latvian.
Bringing the Party: The Joy of Writers’ Group Anthologies – Neil Williamson
Neil Williamson has been a member of the Glasgow SF Writers' Circle for over thirty years and co-edited their anthologies Thirty Years Of Rain and Gallus, as well two volumes of Scottish speculative Fiction, Nova Scotia and Nova Scotia vol 2, and Blood In The Bricks, an anthology of urban folk horror. He has also written novels, novellas and over eighty short stories. His work as writer and editor has been shortlisted for British Fantasy, British Science FictionAssociation and World Fantasy awards.
Handling Submissions – Allen Ashley
Allen Ashley won the British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology in 2006, as editor of “The Elastic Book Of Numbers” (Elastic Press, 2005). He has been short-listed for the BFA on multiple other occasions. Allen has successfully edited anthologies, print magazines and online journals. As a writer, he has had over 200 short stories published along with hundreds of poems and flash fictions, as well as numerous non-fiction articles, essays and reviews. Amongst his back catalogue, you will find his celebrated novel “The Planet Suite” (TTA Press 1997; reprinted and expanded for Eibonvale Press, 2016). His most recent books are: a career-spanning, Elgin Award nominated poetry collection “Echoes from an Expired Earth” (Demain Publishing, paperback, 2021) and the Atom Punk novelette “Journey to the Centre of the Onion” (Eibonvale Press, 2023). Allen works as a developmental editor / critical reader and as a creative writing tutor. He is the founder of the advanced SFF group Clockhouse London Writers.
Interview - Steve J. Shaw
Steve J. Shaw is a World Fantasy Award-winning editor, publisher, typesetter and designer based in the depths of rural Kent. He is the proprietor of the multi-time BFA-nominated press Black Shuck Books, home to the Black Shuck Shadows series of micro-collections, the Black Shuck Signature novella line and the recently-launched Black Shuck Screen imprint. He is also the editor of the ongoing Great British Horror / Something Peculiar series of anthologies. Away from Black Shuck, Steve takes on cross-genre typesetting and design work through his freelance business, WHITEspace.
The Thrill of the Chase – Sophie Essex
Sophie Essex is a Norwich-based poet, editor and photographer. With Salò Press she has edited several anthologies on themes such modern surrealism, and erotica. She also edits the ongoing literary magazine, PISSOIR! She has previously been shortlisted for British Fantasy Society Awards in the Best Anthology category for Dreamland (Black Shuck Books) and At The Lighthouse (Eibonvale Press). Find her @capitanofelixio / @salopress
It’s Never ‘Simply’ the Best: Editing The Best of British Science Fiction – Donna Scott
Donna Scott is a freelance editor and publisher, best known for collating Newcon Press's Best of British Science Fiction reprint anthology series since 2016. Best of British Science Fiction 2022 won the BSFA Best Collection Award 2023. In 2023, she founded The Slab Press, a genre publishing company, which brought out Dark Horses: Science Fiction Stories by Friends of the Arts Lab as its first publication and has published several anthologies since. Besides editing and writing, she is also a stand-up comedian, which inspired her Slab Press anthology, Laughs in Space. www.donna-scott.co.ukhttps://theslab.press
Editing with Purpose: Cause and Community – Lee Murray
Lee Murray ONZM (Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit) is a writer, editor, poet, essayist and screenwriter from Aotearoa New Zealand, a Shirley Jackson Award and five-time Bram Stoker Award® winner, including for anthology, fiction collection, and short fiction. A USA Today bestselling author with more than forty titles to her credit, among them more than two dozen anthologies, Lee holds a New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction and is an Honorary Literary Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Authors. Lee’s recent works include feature film Grafted (directed by Sasha Rainbow), horror anthology This Way Lies Madness (Flame Tree Press) co-edited with Dave Jeffery, and prose-poetry collection, NZSA Cuba Press Prize-winner Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud (The Cuba Press). She is proud to contribute her essay, “Editing with Purpose: Cause & Community” for Luna Press’s Collective: The Collaborative Art of Anthologies from editors Dan Coxon and Pete Sutton, releasing October 2026. Read more at https://www.leemurray.info/
Collective will be out October 2026, and as always our newsletter will keep you up to date with the various stages of publication.