I always feel like there should be a fanfare at this point. Can we get a fanfare?

Okay, well I am thrilled to announce that the time has come for the Strange Horizons fund drive!

As most of you know by now, Strange Horizons is entirely voluntarily funded-our amazing family of supporters is the reason we are able to bring you such a bevy of delicious poetry, fiction, art and non-fiction from across the world of SFF and speculative literature.

To help Strange Horizons keep bringing you all that great stuff in 2019, we need to raise $13,000. This will help us bring you more devastating, beautiful fiction like 'Strange Waters' by Sarah Hills, more tricksy, capricious poetry like 'To Current Occupant' by Marie Vibbert and more searing and insightful articles and columns, like Erin Horáková's 'Freshly Remember'd: Kirk Drift'.

If you'd like to help us meet those goals, please donate to our Kickstarter!

On our journey to being fully-funded, we'll also release shiny, new bonus content in the fund drive special issue. Here's what you can look forward to:

$3,000 - bonus fiction by Margaret Killjoy
$5,000 - bonus article by Darcie Little Badger
$7,000 - 2 bonus poems by Mary Soon Lee
$9,000 - bonus review by Erin Horáková
$11,000 - bonus fiction by Natalia Theodoridou
$13,000 - SH is fully funded! E-books for all donors!

So that's the road to another year of Strange Horizons in 2019.

The thing is, we have bigger plans. Some of you have been reading for years, and you know the score by now. We want to go further and bring you even more exciting work from fresh new writers in the genre, established SFF superstars and all the fantastic writers in between.

Stretch goals from last year's fund drive brought us the triumphant Southeastern USA special issue, guest edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Erin Roberts and Rasha Abdulhadi, and focusing on work by black, indigenous and/or writers of color from the Southeastern USA. In 2016, stretch goals helped us develop Samovar, our sister site for SFF in translation. It's the stretch goals that let us push that little bit further, and do a little bit more.

So, if we raise $14,500 we'll add an international SFF special to our roster for 2019. We've been on a bit of a roll with these in recent years: we've put together collections of stellar work from Spain, India and the Arab League and diaspora. This has been one of our favourite ways of bringing voices from all over the world into our pages, and we hope you've all enjoyed reading them as much as we've enjoyed putting them together.

That's not all. If we raise $16,000 we'll run a special issue focusing on comics, featuring new solicited work from comics artists, writers, and critical work relating to the artform. We've wanted to create an issue like this for a while, and we know we can put together something fabulous with your help.

If you want to help us spotlight SFF and storytelling forms from around the world, donate now.

Now onto something Kate and I feel really strongly about. As our long-term readers will know, while we pay all our authors, our wonderful, skilled staff put in a huge amount of work to make each weekly issue, and they do it on an entirely voluntary basis. Our team of editors, proof-readers, webmasters, first-readers and so many others, delight and astound us every week with the things they pull out of the bag to bring this magazine together.

There have been lots of conversations in the field over the last few years about widening access to editorial positions, and the difficulty in doing so if these posts are unpaid. We want to make sure Strange Horizons is a place where talented staff can hone their skills and start making their way in the field of SFF, and we don't want anyone to miss out on that opportunity because they can't afford to work for free.

This year, we want to raise $21,000 so that we can pay our amazing staff a small honorarium to thank them for their dedication, their hard work, and for making Strange Horizons the magazine it is. It's a small step, but a necessary one. The Editors-in-Chief won't be included, but everyone else who has been actively working on the magazine for the year will.

If you feel as passionately as we do, and want to make sure Strange Horizons can keep fostering incredible editorial talent, please donate now.

So, you know what we're planning to do with the money. But if you decide to become a donor to Strange Horizons, what do you get in return? I'm so glad you asked.

• If you donate any amount whatsoever and we fully fund at $13,000 you'll get a fund drive e-book, containing all our special bonus content from this year's fund drive.
• If you donate $25 you get access to all of the Strange Horizons ebooks from 2018
• If you donate $40 you get the above and digital wallpaper of our 2018 artwork for your computer/phone/device.
• If you donate $50 you get the above and a mug, t-shirt or tote bag branded with the Strange Horizons logo
• If you donate $75 you don't have to choose! You get a mug, t-shirt and tote as well as all lower tier rewards.
• If you donate $100 you get all lower tier rewards and a set of art postcards, featuring all of the art from this year.
• If you donate $150 you get one of our special limited edition Strange Horizons lapel pins and all the $75 rewards.

Strange Horizons is dear to all of our hearts, and we know it is dear to many of yours too. Help us to keep pushing the boundaries of the field, to keep bringing you work from the best writers and editors around, wherever they might be.

Donate now and let's make 2019 our best year yet.