Introducing Darker Times
Who we are, what we're doing, and how you can help.
At Darker Times, we are building a worker-owned, reader-supported horror magazine to carve out a space for fans, scholars, and creators of horror.
Horror gets a bad name. Most outlets don’t cover it. Readers who want thoughtful coverage on it are forced to drop cash if they want to read an interview with a buzzy director or review of a bestselling book. And even though horror is an old and storied genre, it doesn’t get the same attention as science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, or most other genres.
But horror speaks to audiences in ways no other genre can: by ripping out the hearts, minds, and souls of all who dare to consume it.
Darker Times is a worker-owned horror magazine that takes a thoughtful, personal, and critical look at the horror genre, from books and movies to TV shows, short stories, games, and beyond. Horror is a wide and wild beast. We would never dream of trying to tame or cage it.
We write about horror—whatever that means to you, and to us. At Darker Times, you’ll find thoughtful writing that engages critically with the genre, its place in the broader culture, its relationship to other genres/modes/art forms, and its past, present, and future.
Subscribers make Darker Times possible. Beyond the warm, tingly feeling of knowing you’re supporting independent horror criticism and coverage, paid subscribers also get:
- Access to all articles
- Commenter privileges
- Access to our book and movie clubs
With your support, we look forward to adding even more subscriber perks and benefits in the future!
What Does It Mean to Be Worker-Owned?
Being worker-owned means we have the freedom and control to publish what we want–and only what we want–thanks to subscribers, not investors, corporate overlords, or shareholders. We take great inspiration from, and give big thanks to, other worker-owned publications that came before us and showed us how to get here, including Defector, Aftermath, and Ravenous.
Real humans who really love horror are behind Darker Times. We bring together decades of horror experience from places like Strange Horizons, Nightlight: A Horror Podcast, Tor Nightfire, The New York Times Book Review, Vulture, and more.
We aim to make as much of our writing free to read as we can, but paid subscribers will always have access to everything.
What Can You Expect from Darker Times?
Our horror coverage will engage not only with story and scares but also with artistic techniques and choices, cultural context, brain worms, personal experiences, and more. We don’t just care about the What, but also the How and the Why. We're lifelong horror fans who’ve been shaped by the genre. You can expect that we will always come to horror with an inclusive, thoughtful, humorous, and respectful eye.
We're excited to join the ranks of other horror publications fighting the good fight – Fangoria, Nightmare, Bloody Disgusting, Night Tide, Rue Morgue, Dread Central, and many more. We consider these publications family, not competitors. Horror is a big, weird tent, and there's room for all of us.
Darker Times Founding Team
Anna Dupre
Hailing from the South and deeply devoted to all that is dark and disturbing, Anna Rose-Dupre Landry (she/her) is a horror fanatic who is obsessed with the latest and greatest horror fiction, the female-identifying experience, and the confrontation of norms in our current social landscape. She spends her days interviewing some of the biggest names in horror fiction for her podcast Anna Rose Reads, interrogating her relationship with fear through her writing, and attempting to keep up with the latest genre films and television shows. You can expect many think pieces, personal anecdotes, and all The X-Files references your heart can desire in her writing. Anna lives in Louisiana with her husband and their dog/center of their universe.
Emily C. Hughes
Emily C. Hughes (she/her) is the Bram Stoker Award®-winning author of Horror For Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You’re Too Scared to Watch. Formerly the editor of Unbound Worlds and TorNightfire.com, she's a passionate advocate for the horror genre. You can find her writing in The New York Times Book Review, Vulture, Slate, Reactor Magazine, and more, and she catalogs all the new horror books published each year at readjumpscares.com. Emily lives in a haunted house in crunchy western Massachusetts with her husband and four idiot cats.
Aigner Loren Wilson
Aigner Loren Wilson (she/her) is a warm casket, waiting for you to climb in. She is a former editor of Strange Horizons and a fiction writer with horror stories in Nightmare Magazine, F&SF, Monstrous Futures, and more. Her critical writing has been published in Wired, The Washington Post, Reactor, and more. She’s won the Hugo Award for her work with Strange Horizons, been nominated for the Ignyte Award for best novelette and best critic, and honors listed for the Otherwise Fellowship Award. She loves writing about horror’s personal connections to race, sexuality, memory, trauma, and more.
Jessica Woodbury
Jessica Woodbury (she/her) started blogging in 2001. She’s worked in media for several years including staff roles at Vox Media, The Wall Street Journal, and McClatchy Media, and written as a freelancer for HuffPost, The Toast, and Book Riot. She was featured in the anthology The Book of Queer Mormon Joy. She loves going to the movies alone and is always reading too many books at once. She is excited to be the in-house grump who doesn’t like anything. She has a lot of opinions about folk horror; social horror; gender and sexuality in horror; the overlap of horror with mystery and true crime; and the ever-important plot-to-vibes ratio.
To us, horror is…
“Horror is how we process the worst and most upsetting parts of life. Horror is therapy, entertainment, and catharsis all rolled up into one. Horror is beautiful and terrible and disgusting and enlightening. Horror is essential.” - Emily C. Hughes, Darker Times co-founder
“Horror is the best friend you love more than you should and maybe you are really in love with horror, but would horror ever love you back? Yes, horror says, it does love you back but the catch is if it is ever going to work you have to accept all the bad, horrible, nasty things that you’d rather not face. Only then, will horror love you forever, totally and completely.” - Aigner Loren Wilson, Darker Times co-founder
“The safest unsafe space to ask life’s greatest questions, the horror genre, in all of its formats, allows darkness to frolic, a playground for the imagination where nothing is off limits. Horror is my safe space, my home, and one of my closest friends as we can have conversations surrounding humanity’s biggest conflicts, struggles and strifes.” - Anna Dupre, Darker Times co-founder
“Horror is where all your morbid little impulses and worries and thoughts are no longer unspoken. It’s where the hidden parts of yourself are brought into the light. It’s forcing yourself to look at the thing you don’t want to see. And it’s the deep breath of relief once you can turn away again.” - Jessica Woodbury, Darker Times co-founder
We do this for you, for us, and for anybody not afraid to look twice at what goes bump under the hood of our favorite horror media.
Horror has impacted all of our lives, whether we consume it for entertainment purposes or not. Now there is a place for people to think, talk, and commune around what scares us, what haunts us, and what makes us think. Darker Times is a publication that will make you love horror even more than you do already.
Want to support us? Subscribe now, or donate! Follow us on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads for updates. Have questions? Want to partner or advertise with us? Get in touch. We're glad you're here with us in the dark.
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