J. V. Molenaar Founder & Editor-in-Chief

Ink Bleeds Press was founded by J. V. Molenaar for stories that don't fit anywhere polite. At present the press is a one-human operation, every story read, every issue assembled, every stamp inked by the same hand.

Ink Bleeds Press is a literary horror e-zine and small press for the strange, the weird, and the dark. We publish fiction, poetry, and art that gets under your skin and stays there. Splatterpunk guts, literary bones, psychological rot.

Think of us as a photocopied, stapled, xeroxed zine passed hand to hand, the kind of thing you weren’t sure you were supposed to be reading. We were born in 2026, but our spirit goes back to 1986, to the underground presses and the people who made things because they had to, not because anyone asked.

The editors of Ink Bleeds have a soft spot for stories that unravel the mind and play tricks with the page. We love the creeping madness of The Yellow Wallpaper, the slippery, haunted reading experience of The Raw Shark Texts, and the labyrinth of House of Leaves. Beyond those, we want anything that makes us worry, shriek, or squirm. If a story leaves us checking the locks, rereading the last line, or sleeping with the light on, we want to publish it.

The writers and artists we publish keep their copyright and ownership. We ask only for first publishing rights and the right to archive the work digitally. The press is currently funded out of the editor’s pocket; every issue is a labor of love, and we are building toward paying our contributors in more than gratitude, one issue at a time.

We also believe the work should be yours. AI may help polish a draft, but the prose and the ideas must come from the author. No ghosts in the machine here, only the ones you put on the page.