Literary Magazines

We look for the honest voice, the idiosyncratic signature, experimental where necessary but not willfully so. Writing that grows from a vision, a perspective, and a passion will interest us, regardless of structure or approach.

The Antioch Review, founded in 1941, is one of the oldest, continuously publishing literary magazines in America, publishing fiction, essays, and poetry from both emerging as well as established authors. Our authors are consistently included in Best American anthologies & Pushcart.

The Bad Version is a quarterly print magazine that seeks to foster conversation about the world we live in through the fiction, poetry, and essays of the young and curious. Its name comes from the collaborative art of screenwriting, where the first attempt at a scene, that wild idea that gets the process going, is called a “bad version.” Likewise, this magazine is dedicated to beginnings: to pieces that are taking risks, trying to broach new ideas, experimenting with new forms, starting new conversations.

Bound Off is an Iowa-based independent literary magazine. Our mission is to merge the oral tradition of storytelling with new technology to create a digital audio magazine.

Showcasing the work of both established and emerging artists, Camera Obscura Journal is a full-color volume of contemporary literature and photography, intended to be read and enjoyed, as well as displayed. The writing and photography is selected on the individual merit of each piece, creating an organic collaboration of art forms.

Carve seeks to publish outstanding literary fiction and to promote the writers we publish, helping both new, emerging, and established authors reach a wider literary audience. This is achieved through sharing their stories across a variety of publication mediums: online, print, e-readers, and more.

Literary material of high quality in various forms and genres. We are eclectic.

Contrary is a quarterly literary journal that publishes commentary, fiction, and poetry and especially specimens that defy those categories. Founded at the University of Chicago in 2003, it operates independently on the South Side of Chicago and publishes writers from throughout the world.

Crazyhorse has been publishing the best established and emerging writers for over 50 years. Each year Crazyhorse offers the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize for a single short story, the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize for a single poem, and now the Crazyhorse Nonfiction Prize. The competition is open to all. Submit online in the month of January. The prize awards are $2000 for each genre, and the winning story, poem, and essay are published in Crazyhorse.

Damazine is an online literary journal publishing fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. We focus on authors based in or with ties to the Muslim world in the largest sense. At the same time, we strive to present a rainbow of themes and writing styles. Our biggest criterion is quality. We are looking for powerful, well-crafted pieces that throb with meaning.

Each issue of Ecotone brings together the literary and scientific, the personal and biological, the urban and rural. Much of the writing we publish addresses the idea of place—overlapping habitats both real and aesthetic. We aim to bridge the gap between science and culture, to break out of the pen of the purely literary and wander freely among the disciplines.

A literary and current affairs magazine with the openness and pioneering spirit of the Pacific Northwest, Empirical aspires for truth by boldly introducing thought-provoking points of view and new paradigms. A forum for discourse on contemporary issues, the magazine is "radically empirical" in considering the broad range of human experience. Exploring new ideas in politics, and with an eye on changes in technology and everyday life, the Empirical reader will come away enlivened and inspired by its short stories, poems, art, beautiful photography, and interfaith spiritual perspectives.

Every Day Fiction is an online magazine that specializes in bringing you fine fiction in bite-sized doses. Every day, we publish a new flash fiction story (1000 words or fewer), perfect for your coffee break, your commute, or whenever you have a few minutes for yourself.

The Fiction Desk publishes a range of short stories from new and emerging authors, with a focus on strong plots and characters. We're currently the UK's only quarterly dedicated to new short fiction, but we accept submissions from authors around the world.

The purpose of The First Line is to jump start the imagination-to help writers break through the block that is the blank page. Each issue contains short stories that stem from a common first line; it also provides a forum for discussing favorite first lines in literature. The First Line is an exercise in creativity for writers and a chance for readers to see how many different directions we can take when we start from the same place.

Fugue is a journal of new literature edited by graduate students within the University of Idaho’s English and Creative Writing Programs. Fugue publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry and experiment pieces. We look for writing that incorporates new ideas, themes, and structures. Fugue awards cash prizes and publication for prose and poetry in our annual spring contest. Past judges include Mark Doty, BH Fairchild, Jo Ann Beard, Ilya Kaminsky, Patricia Hampl, and Tony Hoagland.

THE GEORGIA REVIEW seeks memorable and distinctive poems, short stories, and essays, whether from Pulitzer Prize winners or previously unpublished writers. Thesis-oriented interdisciplinary essays are especially welcome. Occasional special features on topics or individual writers.

We have a special focus on the new or lightly published writer, holding the Short Story Award for New Writers four times a year. In the brand-new Best American Short Stories, of the top "100 distinguished short stories," six appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, second only to the New Yorker. We are pleased to say that, of those six, two were those authors' first stories accepted for publication. Every year we pay writers over $50,000, nearly a third of that going to new writers.

Gulf Coast publishes fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and critical art writing as well as reviews and interviews by both emerging and established writers. Each issue features two full-color art sections.

HOOT is a magazine on postcards! We publish stand-alone, zestful nuggets of fewer than 150 words, with art to match. The idea is that current, quality literature can be shareable and accessible.

We select most of our content from the several thousand unsolicited manuscripts that arrive each year from throughout the country and abroad. We take our mission to be nudging along American literature, to be local but not provincial, to be experimental but not without love for our literary traditions. Although you may find writers already familiar to you in most of our issues, you will surely find others who are not. Discovering a new and compelling writer, one we'd never heard of before but whose writing comes through to us--that still seems the magic of our work.

Submissions accepted from the 1st to the 20th of each month. Now a (modest) Paying market. Focus is on the natural, supernatural, spiritual however the creative chooses to define it. Also accepts art and photography.Nominates to Pushcart Prize. Annual Free Poetry Contest with cash prizes.

Kweli celebrates cultural kinships and the role of the literary imagination. In our shared space, you will come to know the lived experience of people of color. Our memories are wrapped inside the music of the Muscogee, the blues songs of the South, the clipped patois of the Caribbean. In English and Spanish, Zulu and Tagalog, a useful past is lying down next to an ailing present. Listen. Grow. Lift. Kweli Journal is a monthly literary publication.  We seek high quality literary work that is beautiful, sustaining, and profound.

Excellent international literature, with focus on Asia/the Pacific/the Americas; often in new translations. Thematic.

Since 1978, The Missouri Review has held a reputation for finding and publishing the very best writers first. We are based at the University of Missouri and publish four issues each year. Each issue contains new fiction, poetry and essays. We also run author interviews and found-text features where we print never before published works such as a short story by William Faulkner or one of Tennessee Williams' plays. Our annual contest is the Editors' Prize, which awards $5000 and publication in each category for a group of poems, a short story, and an essay.

Narrative regularly publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including stories, novels, novellas, personal essays, humor, sketches, memoirs, literary biographies, commentary, reportage, interviews, and features of interest to readers who take pleasure in storytelling and imaginative prose.

NER publishes quality fiction, poetry, and nonfiction that is both challenging and inviting to the general reader. The selections present a broad spectrum of viewpoints and genres, including traditional and experimental fiction and poetry, translations in all genres, criticism, and essays.

NMW's mission is to "promote vibrant imagery, word-craft and pure story-telling talent” by emerging writers. We have launched careers by awarding more than $100,000 to promote writers of fiction, poetry, nonfiction and short-short fiction. Winners of our twice-annual prizes in four categories are showcased alongside profiles and interviews of famous writers.

Published five times each year, the NAR is well-known for its early discovery of young, talented fiction writers and poets. But it also publishes creative nonfiction, with emphasis on increasing concerns about environmental and ecological matters, multiculturalism, and exigent issues of gender and class.

Overtime, a series of one-story chapbooks, was created to showcase some of the stories we receive that are a little too long for our Workers Write! series, but are worthy of publication.

PALABRA's focus is on writing by Chicano & Latino writers that stretches the boundaries of language and literary convention.

Phantom Drift is one of the few literary journals in the United States focused on fabulist writing. We aim to nurture the literature of fabulism, the fantastic, and the surreal by publishing an appealing, top-quality perfectbound literary journal featuring only the best of fiction and poetry from the U.S. and abroad. Our support for writers takes the form of not only providing a showcase for their works, but offering payment, a practice that both assures us the best of writers' work and supports literature as a whole.

Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different and personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles. 50% of each issue is directly solicited by the guest editor, and the remaining 50% is selected from unsolicited manuscripts. Pshares Solos, a new series in 2012, will digitally publish long stories and novella length work as standalone singles. The series is staff edited, and we are actively looking for submissions. See submission guidelines for details.

Published by the University of La Verne, PRISM REVIEW is an annual journal of well-crafted contemporary poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction from established and emerging writers. Alongside its literary works, PRISM REVIEW also publishes interviews with relevant authors and reviews of contemporary works, giving readers the chance to peer through a variety of lenses at the present and future worlds of literature.

Raleigh Review is supported by United Arts Council of Raleigh & Wake County, with funds from the United Arts Campaign as well as the NC Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources. Raleigh Review is a national literary magazine of poetry, art and flash. Our main criterion is the excellence of the poems and stories, not the rubric they might fall under.

As a multicultural journal of poetry, prose and art, River Styx publishes works of both new and established artists significant for their originality, energy and deft of craft. The high quality of its form and content have made it a leader among literary magazines for more than 37 years. We publish poetry, short fiction, essays, drawings and photographs. If your work is the best that it can be and you deem it fits with the established style and content of our magazine, please send it to River Styx.

Wearable, guerilla fiction of under 30 words. Each issue is hand-painted onto a cloth back patch, which is then safety-pinned to an operative

Slice, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit print magazine, is the brainchild of two book editors with a firsthand view of how difficult it is for new authors to have their voices heard. We aim to spark a dialogue between emerging and established writers. In each issue, a specific cultural theme becomes the catalyst for short stories, articles, interviews, and poems from renowned writers and lesser known voices alike. We're looking for anyone with a fresh voice and a compelling story to share--basically any work that really knocks our socks off.

We publish poetry and literary fiction of quality from around the world, but with an emphasis on new Irish writing.

“Strong Words for a Polite Nation” subTerrain Magazine was founded in 1988 to publish writers from the other side of the tracks. Each issue features progressive and sometimes controversial writing, alongside timely book reviews and contemporary visual art. Praised by both writers and readers for featuring work that might not find a home in more conservative periodicals, subTerrain seeks to expand the definition of literary and artistic culture by showcasing the best in progressive writing and ideas.

We are looking for high quality submissions. Whatever form your work takes, as long as it is quality, we want it.

Tin House is a haven for authors at the peak of their powers and also a jumping-off point for unpublished writers and anyone taking risks, pushing form and language. We're a magazine not identified with any one region but international, drawing writers and contributing editors from all over the globe. Each issue seeks to be tantamount to an invitation to the greatest literary house party ever.

Versal, the literary & arts journal out of Amsterdam, seeks work that is urgent, involved, and unexpected. A publication celebrating translocal intersections and cross-cultural dialogue, Versal is internationally renowned for the quality of work published by up-and-coming as well as established writers, and for its strong attention to design and production values. Versal has been featured many times in Poets&Writers Magazine, including being named among the "top indie innovators" (November/December 2010).

Our primary mission in creating Visions with Voices is to promote the spoken word as a legitimate genre with standards that differentiate excellent work. We are creating here a venue which will give the artist a sense of accomplishment along with a respectable publishing credit.

Each issue of Workers Write! contains stories and poems from a particular workplace.