What is Grim & Gilded?

Started in December of 2021 by writer and editor Carter Brighton, Grim & Gilded is a fledgling online literary journal. Grim & Gilded was founded upon the idea of finding beauty within the darkness - the feverish seeking for threads of gold among the twisting gloom and dusky shadows. The brightest ray of sunlight cannot reach all dark corners of humanity, and it is here that exists the places that hold the morbid horrors we cannot tear our eyes away from and the lilting lullabies that wash eerily over the deep history of the collective unconscious. G&G seeks to pull words from these places of darkness and place them, unapologetically, into the light of day where they may be studied, absorbed, and reflected upon by those who wish to confront the shadows within us all.

Submissions - as a General Rule

G&G is looking for stories and poetry steeped in the genres of horror, fantasy, and dark fiction. Humanity’s oldest forms of storytelling are rooted in mythology and folklore - narratives that played a fundamental role in society, whether it be to explain the origin of the world or to warn against evil in the vast and seemingly infinite wilderness. This is not to say all submissions are required to be contained within some version of Middle Earth - far from it. We want to read from BOTH literary and genre spaces, with strong, character driven narratives. Urban/contemporary fantasy, magical realism, and science fiction are all welcome and encouraged.

Grim & Gilded seeks to elevate and uplift new and emerging authors- the weekend writers, the office workers scrawling prose in the margins of their meeting notes, the ‘jot it down on a napkin during my lunch break-ers’. Unpublished voices are especially welcomed and encouraged.

For full submission details, please visit the Writer’s Guidelines.