With Ellen Datlow, Windling edited 16 volumes of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (1986–2003), an anthology series that reached beyond the boundaries of genre fantasy to incorporate magic realism, surrealism, poetry, and other forms of magical literature.

She is also recognized as one of the founders of the urban fantasy genre, having published and promoted the first novels of Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, and other pioneers of the form.

Wrede, Charles de Lint, and others) and thirdly as the editor of over thirty anthologies of magical fiction. In the American publishing field, Windling is one of the primary creative forces behind the mythic fiction resurgence that began in the early 1980s-first through her work as an innovative editor for the Ace and Tor Books fantasy lines secondly as the creator of the Fairy Tales series of novels (featuring reinterpretations of classic fairy tale themes by Jane Yolen, Steven Brust, Pamela Dean, Patricia C. Windling's work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Czech, Lithuanian, Turkish, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. She was also honored with SFWA's Soltice Award in 2010, a lifetime achievement award for 'significant contributions to the speculative fiction field as a writer, editor, artist, educator, and mentor'. Windling has won nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and her anthology The Armless Maiden, a fiction collection for adult survivors of child abuse, appeared on the shortlist for the James Tiptree, Jr. Terri Windling is an American editor, artist, essayist, and the author of books for both children and adults.

Tor books the mountains of mourning