Possible comp titles: Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob, A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza, Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, The Lightness by Emily Temple

More submission info: https://www.wildhuntbooks.co.uk/submissions

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Ariell Cacciola is the editorial director of Wild Hunt Books. She is always open to agented submissions and opens up periodically for unagented authors. She is seeking manuscripts that speak to the heart of the company: Our mission is to foster strong and distinct literary voices and those who experiment with narrative, plot and structure. We are also a home for authors dabbling in the darker genres and liminal spaces.

She loves language that evokes place, voice and mood, and loves when this works as a visceral entry point for the reader into a story. Some of her favourite writers are: Shirley Jackson, Daisy Johnson, Charlotte Brontë, Margaret Atwood and Franz Kafka.

I love books that have clear, engaging prose from the start, and don’t sacrifice on character or story. I’m looking for novels that are close to their characters and worlds. I also like a strong authorial voice. I tend to gravitate towards fiction rooted in reality even if it incorporates genre. While I’m not the perfect editor for pure genre, I do cling to novels that play with genre and upend genre expectations or motifs. Some of my favourite recent reads have been:

• The Last House on Needless Street
• Sundial
• Follow Me to Ground
• Our Wives Under the Sea
• The Harpy
• Piranesi
• Just Like Home
• Death of a Bookseller
• Starve Acre
• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
• Boy Parts
• Penance
• The End of the End of Everything
• My Sister, the Serial Killer
• The Vegetarian
• His Bloody Project
• The Examiner

Some of my favourite genres are literary mystery, magical realism, horror, Gothic, epistolary, folk horror and speculative fiction. I really need a book to grab me from the first page (first line is even better!). I also really like to be surprised by a book, i.e., does the story or character spin in an unexpected way? I’m particularly taken with modern and contemporary set books but wouldn’t be put off by something pre-1850. 

I would be very happy to receive manuscripts that involve:

• Folk horror
• Unconventional locked rooms
• Modern day set Gothic stories
• Unexpected ghost stories
• Literary novels that upend genre expectations
• Unreliable POVs
• Mysteries with an unexpected sleuth or mystery at its core
• Isolation on an island
• A mysterious item or ritual
• Everyone in a village goes mad
• The land has turned on people and soured
• Eco or climate fiction, especially with an uncanny plot or elements

I especially would love to hear from writers outside of London, BAME, disabled, neurodivergent, LGBTQ+, writers over 40, working class and non-Brits living in the UK. 

What I’m not looking for:

• YA or Children’s fiction
• Most fantasy like high fantasy, urban fantasy or epic fantasy; erotica; hard science fiction and space operas
• Racist or abusive material
• No AI produced material