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2025 in review

• Submissions window info: in addition to general submissions windows, we also opened to submissions for seasonal stories, our annual Banned Books Week event, flash fiction, and a limited-demographic window for Young Authors.
• We will have published 43 stories over 41 episodes – a total of over 140,000 words. 27 stories were original, and 16 were reprints.
• We also produced ten re-issue episodes (9 Staff Pick stories, 1 Encore story)
• This year we published two stories by Young Authors, and were the first publication credit for a number of other authors. We have some great fiction by young authors already lined up for 2026!

You can access all our 2025 original fiction at this link. At the end of December, we’ll be releasing our Staff Picks from 2025.

We welcomed several new associate editors to the team: Adri Joy, Kit Caelsto, Elinor Wahl and Angela Zazueta.

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Highlights

• Award nominations: Cast of Wonders was nominated for the Outstanding Fiction Podcast Ignyte Award.
• Plangdi Neple’s 2024 story Bodies of Sand and Blood was a finalist for the 2025 Nommo Award for Best Short Story
• Several stories received recommended reviews in Locus (Charles Payseur) or Reactor (Alex Brown): The Otter Woman’s Daughter (CoW 629), Sometimes It Happens That Way (CoW 631), Whatever Remains of the Dead (CoW 636), Feeding Spirits (CoW 642).
• Team Kudos: CoW co-assistant editor Amy Brennan represented us at an expert meet-up event with Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers

 

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Special Events

Cast of Wonders also ran a number of special events through the year

• Banned Books Week – 5 stories selected for our annual event celebrating the freedom to read
• Lodestar, Astounding, and Hugo Spotlight episodes – 7 stories highlighting the short fiction of Lodestar, Astounding and Hugo Award nominees
• Young Author Stories – we published 2 stories by Young Authors, with a number of others due for publication in early 2026.

We are looking forward to a creepy Christmas episode this year. Following that, the team will present their Staff Pick episodes for 2025.

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 2025 in pictures

If you want a snapshot of the year, what better way than a mosaic of our episode art? The eagle-eyed will note that this includes a preview of forthcoming episodes…

Enjoy!