The Uncanny Regimes Anthology
3rd Edition, Q2, 2026
Our 2026 anthology series follows a shared arc of literary, uncanny, psychologically grounded work. Across the year, the quarter anthologies form a loose narrative progression – from Thresholds through to collapse, haunting, and strange rebirth – balancing dread and awe with hope, resilience, and defiance. The following table shows this.
Each anthology explores not only horror’s emotional charge but its ethical dimensions: how power, harm, resistance, and care unfold amid darkness. We favour nuance and psychological intensity over gratuitous extremes, while always leaving room for glimmers of humanity.
The Uncanny Regimes Anthology call invites prose, graphic narrative, poetry, experimental, and multilingual work. We seek literary horror, New Weird, speculative, and gothic responses to systems that exert eerie control – governments, corporations, cults, fandoms, families, neighbourhood committees, churches, even algorithms. Show us the quiet pressure of oppressive structures and the strange, shifting rules beneath everyday life.
Play with perception: let your characters doubt what they know. Unease and uncertainty are essential to the uncanny. We welcome cross-genre and hybrid forms that transform the ordinary into something subtly off-kilter – where bureaucracy becomes haunting, loyalty schemes feel ritualistic, or administration morphs into nightmare.
Within these regimes, we want sparks of resistance: individuals or communities finding solidarity, care, or defiant hope amid control. Subvert tropes, challenge assumptions, surprise us.
Some guiding ideas (optional prompts):
What if an everyday system – like a health app, loyalty card, or school timetable—enforces rules that were never written?
How might a minor act of disobedience begin to warp a seemingly stable world?
Could a family, church, or online community resemble a miniature authoritarian state?
What if bureaucracy itself began speaking – through dreams, songs, or graffiti?
We’ll assess submissions on:
Relevance: Engagement with uncanny, structural, and psychological themes; freshness of approach.
Literary quality: Voice, style, and emotional depth – does your piece evoke dread, awe, defiance, and ambiguity?
Structure: How form supports theme and mood.
Originality: Subversion of familiar tropes; invention in concept and execution.
For practical details (submission process, length, and boundaries), please see our General Submission Guidelines.
The submissions window will close at 23:59 (GMT) on Sunday 31 May 2026.
Ready to submit to our anthology?
Email your submission to editor@gossamerwight.com. Please ensure you include all the information requested in the current anthology’s theme-specific guidance (above), together with the relevant parts of the General Submission Guidelines. Alternatively, visit the homepage of our website to upload your submission using the Anthology Submissions Portal (Form ‘A’).
Once you’ve submitted, we’ll send you an email confirmation of our safe receipt and download of your submission within three working days.1
Voluntary fees: we accept voluntary fees (‘tip jar’ payments) for all submission types. Should you wish to tip, please use our Buy Me A Coffee link below. Thank you!
Good luck with your submission!
With my warm wishes,
James Paxton Priestley, Editor-in-Chief.
[On behalf of the GossamerWight Literary Magazine editorial team]
Need to query something before submitting? Click the button below…
[Anthology soundtrack by Waderman. https://audiojungle.net/user/waderman]
“The window is open. Your resistance is welcome.”
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