Welcome to the special young adult fiction issue of Subterranean Online. When the wonderful Bill Schafer offered me the opportunity to guest edit an issue–and, even better, to focus it on YA–I knew I wanted to include a mix of work from SFF authors whose work might be new to YA readers, and, the flip side, from YA authors whose work might be new to SFF readers.

One of the things that makes YA such a special field is its diversity. Because YA typically isn’t segmented beyond that larger catch-all category (recent section changes at Barnes and Noble aside), all different types of stories bump up against each other. I believe this often allows authors the freedom to tell very different kinds of stories, without the fear (necessarily) of losing their audience. Sure, you hear people dismiss the YA field as being overrun by paranormal romance and dystopia, but even if that were true, the distance between those two popular subgenres says much about the broad tastes of its readership. In contrast to the larger SFF field, however, YA doesn’t have much of a short fiction scene beyond anthologies–so I figured there would be plenty of great YA stories out there if I could just get my grubby paws on them.

Enter the fabulous writers whose stories you’ll find here. Each offering showcases a different facet of the many-faceted jewel that is YA. You’ll find Malinda Lo’s first short story publication, “The Fox,” a seductive tale featuring characters from her new YA high fantasy novel Huntress, alongside the best high fantasy zombie story I’ve ever read in Sarah Rees Brennan’s “Queen of Atlantis.” Both these authors–as well as Tiffany Trent (author of the Hallowmere series, and the upcoming The Unnaturalists), and Kelly Link (acclaimed short fiction author, whose YA stories were collected in Pretty Monsters)–will already be familiar to many YA readers, and to plenty of genre readers as well. If Genevieve Valentine’s story about an unusual teen pregnancy, “Demons, Your Body, and You,” is your introduction to her, I envy you; her first novel Mechanique will be out soon. Well-known SFF author Tobias Buckell provides a slick science fiction piece with “Mirror, Mirror,” while newer writer Richard Larson’s “The Ghost Party” tests the friendship of two girls against a backdrop of threats shady and eldritch. Finally, vampires: what YA issue would be complete without them? I promise you that Alaya Dawn Johnson’s hilarious, shockingly irreverent “Their Changing Bodies” is unlike any vampire story you’ve read, and that New York Times’ bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler’s “Younger Women” also opens a different, ahem, vein.

And, with that, I hope you enjoy reading all of these stories as much as I enjoyed choosing them.