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Best Literary Magazines in 2024

Showing 133 magazines that match your search.

Print magazine for Fiction , Poetry , Non-Fiction ,

The Sun is an independent, ad-free magazine that for more than forty years has used words and photographs to evoke the splendor and heartache of being human. The personal essays, short stories, interviews, poetry, and photographs that appear in The Sun's pages explore the challenges we face and the moments when we rise to meet them.

Submission guidelines →

👀 Average visits: 166,800 /month

🌍 Territory: USA

💰 Submission fee: $0

⏱️ Frequency: 12 times a year

🧑‍💻 Online submissions: Yes

The Antigonish Review

Founded in 1970, The Antigonish Review is the third longest-running creative-writing journal in the Maritimes and one of the oldest continuing literary magazines in Canada.

👀 Average visits: 349,600 /month

🌍 Territory: Canada

⏱️ Frequency: 4 times a year

Print magazine for Fiction , Poetry ,

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.

💰 Submission fee: $3

⏱️ Frequency: 2 times a year

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Greensboro Review

Print magazine for Fiction , Poetry , Short Fiction ,

The Greensboro Review is always on the lookout for new short stories and poems from writers at any stage of their career. The work you’ll find in the pages of the GR rarely conforms to any one theme, subject, or style—our editors read for those “bolts of lightning” that come with a surprising poem or story, the pleasure of spotting something new or discovering a fresh take on the familiar.

Print & Online magazine for Fiction , Non-Fiction ,

Our editorial mission is to encourage writers, new and established, to take themselves as seriously as possible — to write with as much energy and daring as possible, and to connect their own deepest concerns with the broader social and political environment; that is, to write, while it happens, a history of the present day. We welcome submissions from all writers. If you are considering sending work, please start by reading an issue or two. The best submission guidelines are those implied by the magazine itself.

⏱️ Frequency: 3 times a year

Kenyon Review

Print magazine for Poetry , Short Fiction , Scripts ,

Building on a tradition of excellence dating back to 1939, the Kenyon Review has evolved from a distinguished literary magazine to a pre-eminent arts organization. Today, KR is devoted to nurturing, publishing, and celebrating the best in contemporary writing. We're expanding the community of diverse readers and writers, across the globe, at every stage of their lives.

👀 Average visits: 111,000 /month

⏱️ Frequency: 6 times a year

Southwest Review

Print & Online magazine for Fiction , Non-Fiction , Poetry ,

Our mission is to publish a magazine of the highest quality for general readers worldwide. As we reflect on our past and look ahead to the future, the goal is to inspire new ways of connecting with the world. Simply put, we think writing should be as comprehensive and far-reaching as twenty-first–century life itself.

⏱️ Frequency: 1 times a year

Founded in 1972 and “known for publishing important new writers early in their careers” (PEN), AGNI discovers stories, poems, and essays that map our pressured interiority and respond in necessary ways to the bedeviled state of the world. Six contributors have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The New Yorker is a weekly magazine offering a signature mix of reporting and commentary on politics, international affairs, popular culture and the arts, science and technology, and business, along with fiction, poetry, humor, and cartoons. If your story makes it onto the pages of the New Yorker, you've made it.

👀 Average visits: 34,600,000 /month

⏱️ Frequency: 52 times a year

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Online magazine for Fiction , Short Fiction ,

Beneath Ceaseless Skies publishes “literary adventure fantasy”: stories with a secondary-world setting and some fantasy feel, but written with a literary approach.

⏱️ Frequency: 24 times a year

New England Review

Print magazine for Poetry , Non-Fiction , Short Fiction ,

NER was founded by poets Sydney Lea and Jay Parini in New Hampshire in 1978. By publishing new fiction, poetry, and nonfiction that is both challenging and inviting, New England Review encourages artistic exchange and thought-provoking innovation, providing publishing opportunities for writers at all stages in their careers.

💰 Submission fee: $2

Pigeon Review

Online magazine for Art , Fiction , Short Fiction ,

A new literary and art magazine dedicated to showcasing emerging artists and writers.

🌍 Territory: United States

Southampton Review

Print & Online magazine for Fiction , Poetry , Non-Fiction , Scripts ,

Dedicated to publishing fine fiction, nonfiction, plays, screenplays, poetry, literary cartoons, photography and art, The Southampton Review opens its pages to writers from across the globe whose work is compelling. Our pages are equally devoted to emerging and established writers and artists.

Print & Online magazine for Fiction , Poetry ,

Able Muse predominantly publishes metrical poetry and poetry translation complemented by art and photography, fiction and non-fiction including essays, book reviews and interviews with a focus on metrical and formal poetry. We are looking for well-crafted poems of any length or subject that employ skillful and imaginative use of meter and rhyme, executed in a contemporary idiom, that reads as naturally as your free verse poems.

👀 Average visits: 18,200 /month

The first issue of the Orion Nature Quarterly was published in June 1982, and in its editorial George Russell, the publication's first Editor-in-Chief, boldly stated Orion's values: It is Orion's fundamental conviction that humans are morally responsible for the world in which we live, and that the individual comes to sense this responsibility as he or she develops a personal bond with nature.

👀 Average visits: 80,800 /month

⏱️ Frequency: 36 times a year

Run a literary magazine? Submit it to our directory!

The halls of literary success are paved with authors who got their start appearing in literary magazines — such as Zora Neale Hurston, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Edith Wharton, Ursula Le Guin, J.D. Salinger, George Saunders, Alice Munro, Flannery O’Connor, and many more. 

For centuries, literary magazines have highlighted works that would otherwise struggle to reach readers. Poetry, short stories, essays are all forms of writing that own very tiny shares in the publishing landscape — except in the world of literary magazines, where they reign supreme.

If you’re an aspiring author, submitting to literary magazines is a great way to get your foot into the door of the publishing industry, as it allows you to build up your credentials and reach readers. That being said, having your work appear in a literary magazine isn’t as easy as hitting “submit.” While they can act as a stepping stone for writers who wish to go on to have a career in publishing, you shouldn’t view literary magazines as simply a means to an end — if only because doing so will very likely reduce your chances of ever actually being featured in one of them.

And on that note, let’s get started with our first tip for getting your work featured in some of the best literary magazines out there.

Tips for submitting to literary magazines 

Ensure you’re submitting to the right places.

When you think of literary magazines, your mind might automatically go to The New Yorker . Or it might go to independent webzines that specialize in very niche genres. Maybe you think of university-funded quarterlies like The New England Review . All this is to say that the range of lit mags out there is broad and the kinds of things they publish also ranges — from short lit fic to flash space operas, and everything in between. 

So before you decide to submit your short stories or poetry to a magazine, make sure you do your due diligence and research what kinds of things they publish, and where your work is really a match.

Don’t submit to tons of publications all at one

“Cast a wide net” shouldn’t be your mantra when it comes to submitting to lit mags. As mentioned, all magazines have their own styles. So spending your time ensuring your submissions are targeted at the right places is much more valuable than sending your writing to as many different publications as possible. Editors can usually scout fairly quickly the pieces that have been submitted en masse, without any regard for their specific publication.

Instead, make a list of the magazines you want to submit to and group them into tiers. Tier One can be your top five magazines, Tier Two your next five favorite, and so on. This is not only a good way to make sure you’re giving each submission care and attention, it’s also a good way to make sure you don’t get the same piece of writing accepted by two different magazines, forcing you to pull your submission from one of them.

When it comes to making your list, don’t only consider what magazines have prestige, huge audiences, or hefty cash payouts. The best magazines to submit to are the ones that you actually enjoy reading. Because chances are those are the magazines that are going to be most interested in the kind of things you’re writing.

Keep your cover letter short and to-the-point

Editors are not won over by cover letters. If you’ve written a great story and have publishing credentials to boot, sure, your cover letter might help win them over. But if your submission isn’t strong, your cover letter is going to mean nil. So let your cover letter mention the important bits, make sure it provides any specific information that’s requested in the submission guidelines, and let your entry do the heavy lifting. 

Typically, a cover letter will mention a couple of the previous places you’ve been published as well as any other relevant experience you might have. You can also add a personal touch by mentioning a previous story or issue you particularly enjoyed.

What your letter shouldn’t mention is every place you’ve been published (up to 5 will suffice). It shouldn’t summarize your entry, your life story, or your “writing journey,” and any previous experience you mention should be related in some way to writing, publishing, or your entry.

Thoroughly edit your story — and follow submission guidelines!

An editor is probably not going to banish an otherwise very strong entry to the slush pile because of a misplaced typo. That being said, they have lots of reading to do, and while most editors won’t consciously read an entry looking for reasons not to like it, at the end of the day they can only accept so many pieces. So if you make their jobs easier by giving them a reason to pass on your piece, they’re going to take it. If it’s not adequately proofread, there’s only so long someone can continue reading even the strongest writing before the spelling errors convince them to stop.

Another quick way to convince an editor to pass on your entry is to not follow the submission guidelines. If the guidelines ask you to include specific information or to format your story in a certain way, follow those instructions to a tee. If the guide doesn’t tell you how to format your story, go classic: Arial or Times New Roman 12-point font, double-spaced. To ensure your submissions look professional, you can always copy and paste them into our free formatting tool, the Reedsy Book Editor !

Editors do want to like your submission

The publishing world is competitive, so it’s natural for authors to stress about all the little details of submitting to a literary magazine — whether to add page numbers to their document, who to address in their cover letter, whether they’ll stand a chance as a brand new author, etc. And while we did just mention that editors generally won’t put up a fight if you give them a reason to pass on your entry, they also won’t toss aside a submission they love just because the full package isn’t 100% perfect.

Remember, editors are looking for quality art they feel is going to resonate with their readers. If you can provide them with that, they’re going to be on your side.

Don’t just do it for the money or prestige

If you’re submitting to lit mags with the hopes of raking in the cash, you are more than likely going to be disappointed. Sure, there are some big-time magazines out there that offer larger paycheques to their writers and widespread readership, but many of them don’t accept unsolicited submissions — or come with extremely steep competition.

Most literary magazines are run on very tiny budgets that can’t afford to pay the writers they feature. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t submit to them. The exposure and credibility an emerging writer can gain from having their work featured across a number of smaller, indie publications are still very valuable and shouldn’t be overlooked.

Have fun — and be proud of what you publish!

Yes, having your work appear in literary magazines can help build up your publishing resume. But if you’re not writing and publishing work you feel really proud of, what’s the point? Readers don’t need more stories that make it into magazines because they follow the right trends or say the right things, we want literature that the author clearly loved writing. 

So, as we mentioned earlier, don’t just submit a piece because you think it’s going to get you somewhere. Submit something because you think it’s strong, unique, and worthwhile. Write and submit work you can proudly stand by! 

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Ranking of the 100 Best Literary Magazines

In some ways it’s ridiculous to rank literary magazines by the number of awards they’ve received, but it still can be useful for writers to figure out where to submit.

(If you’re looking for nonfiction or essay rankings, go to my Ranking of Literary Nonfiction Markets ). 

The list below arranges literary journals in order of how many times they’ve had a short story or special mention in the last eleven years in the Best American Short Stories (BASS). I award a certain number of points for the winners and a lesser number of points for every special mention. Every October I’ll update the page to reflect the new year.

There were seventeen newcomers added to this year’s list, up from twelve newcomers last year. Some of the journals were new, and some have been around quite a well and only now are being recognized by BASS.

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On statistics : statistics is a epistemic methodology prized by our modernistic, science-obsessed world as the primary way to Know Things. The cold hard facts trumps subjective knowledge, right? But I would argue that statistics gives us only a very limited view of the world, and one which necessarily skews “proper” knowledge.

Let me be less philosophical and more practical: Please don’t overestimate the important of the list below. The list below does not tell you whether a literary journal is good or not, it only tells you whether the Best American Short Story editors happened to like the flavor of stories in a literary journal. That, necessarily, is entirely subjective, and I encourage you to discover for yourself the type of fiction each literary magazine publishes, as well as explore the many  excellent  literary journals that don’t appear on this list.

I dislike some “high” level literary journals and really love “low” level literary journals. So while my tastes are not necessarily reflected by the list below, that’s good, because it will force you all, my lovely, devoted readers, to form your own judgments.

For those of you already deep in the literary magazine world, I hope that this Best American Short Story list is one aid among many to help you figure out where to submit and subscribe.

Southern Review and Zyzzyva had great showings this year. Zyzzyva moved from 15 to 11, continuing their upward momentum, and Southern Review moved from 12 to 7.

On the other hand, we had an enormous amount of shut-outs this year.  One Story , American Short Fiction , Atlantic Monthly , AGNI ,  Virginia Quarterly Review and Glimmer Train got completely shut out — not a single point for any of them. Which basically means their fiction didn’t resonate with this year’s editor, Roxane Gay. 

Gulf Coast has moved up a great deal over the past few years, up to a respectable spot more commensurate with their reputation, and Passages North got on the map in a big way, going from zero points to 5 points this year.

Another lit mag that’s worth noting is Fifth Wednesday Journal . They’ve been consistently amassing nods from the BASS editors, and they should be on your radar to submit to.

Also, you accomplished short story writers might be planning on writing a novel next. In that case, I’d recommend you read my post on how to pull off a smashbang novel that lights your reader’s brain on fire .

It’s one of my best posts on storytelling and novel advice, so click that link above.

*If there is an asterisk next to the name, it means that journal is no longer publishing new material.*

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14 comments

You say AGNI got shut out this year, but there it is at #16.

The numbers are from the last ten years. Just because one doesn’t get points this year, that doesn’t mean they drop to zero.

OK. I see. Thank you.

Fairly odd. “The New Yorker” is so very mainstream and so well-known that one is not very enlightened by the ranking. Moreover, their “fiction” is hardly in the same league as their non-fiction…..so when you rank them by “literary,” it’s not clear if you are referring to non-fiction OR fiction. Plus you include book REVIEWS further obfuscating matters. Too, no “New York Review of Books” as long as you’re going to include reviews of books as “literary”; in addition, I don’t see “Partisan Review”. Glad to see “McSweeneys” didn’t make the list: near-pure garbage. As I say, an odd list. Nevertheless, I’ll be checking out some of the them.

Yes, if you’re a writer the biggest acceptance of your short story would be New Yorker. I’m certain the NYRB does not apply to John’s list here, nor do any of them do only book reviews.

Also, thanks for the list John! It’s been useful for my submitting process for the last year plus!

NYRB of course also publishes poetry.

To be honest, I really think No Contact Magazine is one of the best lit mags out there in the game. I find their selection to be very current and their overall brand to be one of the best.

Slice, Redivider, Chicago Tribune, and New York Tyrant do not seem to be publishing anymore and probably warrant an asterisk. Would you consider my journal, The Summerset Review? We have been around twenty years.

Redivider is still going, with a Duotrope listing.

Sincere thank you for working this and other literary lists. We writers are a selfish lot, too happy to scavenge any leads down to the metaphorical bone, and run off without so much as a nod to who actually felled and dressed the meat.

And anyone complaining about the quality of the list. Come on, it’s free. And helpful. And you were too lazy to do it yourself (you know who you are).

Some folks in the comments didn’t bother to read how the list was made… SMH

Chicago Quarterly Review has two appearances and six distinguished stories in BASS between 2017 and 2021–surely that totals more than the 5 they’re given here?

Correction to my earlier comment: Chicago Quarterly Review’s two stories and six honorable mentions in BASS range between 2016 and 2021. (PS they also have two honorable mentions in the 2022 issue)

I believe it’s no coincidence. The publications with the most stories selected for Best American Short Stories are also the magazines available to the masses. If I had to pay for them, I would not be able to subscribe to the top 10. However with various Emagazine formats available via the local public library, I can be a regular reader of the top ranked magazines.

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Literary Review

The current issue, march 2012 issue - out now.

In This Issue: John Gray on Tony Judt’s Thinking the Twentieth Century • Elaine Showalter on the first Pop Age • Donald Rayfield on Belarus • Praveen Swami on Sharia law • A C Grayling: What are Universities For? • The Letters of Joseph Roth • Jane Ridley on the Queen • Seamus Perry on the poetry of translation • Jonathan Fenby on Mao • Richard Holloway on religion for atheists • John Sutherland on growing old • Frances Wilson on cruelty and laughter and much, much more…

August 2024

View contents table.

‘This magazine is flush with tight, smart writing.’ Washington Post

Literary Review covers the most important and interesting books published each month, from history and biography to fiction and travel. The magazine was founded in 1979 and is based in central London.

Literary Review covers the most important and interesting books published each month, from history and biography to fiction and travel. The magazine was founded in 1979 and is based in London.

Highlights from the Current Issue

August 2024, Issue 532 John Adamson on Oliver Cromwell * Edward Vallance on the English Republic * Andrew McMillan on Thom Gunn * Tanya Harrod on art and motherhood * Alexander Christie-Miller on Turkey * Peter Davidson on Caspar David Friedrich * Stephen Walsh on Tchaikovsky * Douglas Field on James Baldwin * Dmitri Levitin on Andreas Vesalius * Lucy Moore on artistic swimming * George Cochrane on the new horror * Rosa Lyster on Ursula Parrott * Peyton Skipwith on Charles J Connick *  Glenn Richardson on Catherine de’ Medici * Ian Ellison on Kafka * Jonathan Romney on Twisters  and much, much more…

John Adamson

Oliver cromwell: commander in chief, by ronald hutton.

Ever since Thomas Carlyle first launched his Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell on the world in 1845, the Lord Protector’s published words have exercised an almost mesmeric hold on posterity. Overnight, they transformed a figure who had hitherto been a byword for villainy – was he not the killer of King Charles I? – into a hero for the new Victorian age: a God-fearing, class-transcending champion of ‘russet-coated captains’ who became Britain’s first non-royal head of state. His words resonated with a newly politically ascendant and morally earnest middle class. And in Hamo Thornycroft’s vast sculpture installed outside Westminster Hall in 1899, the Carlylean transformation of Oliver begun by the Letters and Speeches found its embodiment in bronze...  read more

More Articles from this Issue

Peter davidson, caspar david friedrich: art for a new age, by markus bertsch & johannes grave (edd), caspar david friedrich: infinite landscapes, by ralph gleis & birgit verwiebe (edd).

The German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), who is celebrated in these two books published to accompany the exhibitions in Hamburg and Berlin marking the 250th anniversary of his birth, has fascinated me all my life. When I was at school, his mysterious and emotive paintings...  read more

The German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), who is celebrated in these two books published to accompany the exhibitions in Hamburg and Berlin marking the 250th anniversary of his birth, has fascinated me all my life. When I was at school, his mysterious and emotive paintings started to appear on the covers of the grey-spined Penguin Modern Classics series: Abbey in the Oakwood on the cover of Hermann Hesse’s Narziss and Goldmund ; Woman at a Window (the woman’s back turned, one shutter open to the spring morning and the riverbank) on that of Thomas Mann’s Lotte in Weimar . Covers featuring Sea of Ice , with its unfathomable grey-blue sky, and the yearning, autumnal Moonwatchers soon followed. Every image was memorable; every one hinted at emotional and spiritual depths embodied in northern European landscapes and places.

This fascination led me to attempt an undergraduate dissertation on the halted traveller in Romantic poetry and painting. I was following an intuition that Friedrich’s solitary figure in the storm-lit uplands of Mountain Landscape with Rainbow resonated with those moments of disquiet in Wordsworth’s Prelude that are perceptions of sublimity in nature shot through with loneliness and melancholy: ‘forlorn cascades/Among the windings of the mountain brooks’. A tutor reproved me for writing about a painter in relation to poetry, especially a painter tainted by fascist approval. I still think that I was onto something.

Andrew Mcmillan

Thom gunn: a cool queer life, by michael nott.

If this were a biography of any of the other great 20th-century poets, one might open a review by contrasting the new publication with other books that had appeared about them. How does this one measure up? Does it present information hitherto unknown? In the case of Thom Gunn, no such body of work exists. To piece together from scratch the fragments of Gunn’s life, that is Michael Nott’s mission here. It has been twenty years since Gunn died of acute polysubstance abuse, aged seventy-four...  read more

If this were a biography of any of the other great 20th-century poets, one might open a review by contrasting the new publication with other books that had appeared about them. How does this one measure up? Does it present information hitherto unknown? In the case of Thom Gunn, no such body of work exists. To piece together from scratch the fragments of Gunn’s life, that is Michael Nott’s mission here.

It has been twenty years since Gunn died of acute polysubstance abuse, aged seventy-four. Thanks in large part to the efforts of Gunn’s friend Clive Wilmer, who edited his Selected Poems in 2017 and, with Nott and August Kleinzahler, his letters in 2021, as well as other academics such as Stefania Michelucci whose own critical study of Gunn’s poetry was published in 2009, he’s been having a bit of a renaissance. It’s odd that he needed one at all – that he didn’t sit on the same shelf as those he came of age with, such as Ted Hughes (Faber brought out a hugely popular joint collection in 1962) and Philip Larkin. One factor is Gunn’s decision to relocate to the United States. I remember once chatting about Gunn with a renowned biographer who said, ‘Oh, but he’s just so terribly American, isn’t he.’ In the years after I started reading him, it often seemed that Gunn was stranded somewhere in the middle of the ocean, too American for the English, too English for the Americans. He was thought too queer, too structurally formal. One of Nott’s successes in this biography is to take the contradictions and idiosyncrasies and treat them not as problems but as the foundations of a three-dimensional portrait of Gunn as man and poet.

Tanya Harrod

Acts of creation: on art and motherhood, by hettie judah.

This remarkable book begins dramatically and truthfully: ‘A monstrous child is blocking my view and has carved a nest in the soft darkness of my head. It eats the hours, this child, leaving me only crumbs.’ Motherhood can be overwhelming, however longed for. It is never a small thing, even if the rest of the world chooses to ignore it or view it as a block to professionalism. Cyril Connolly’s remark in Enemies of Promise, ‘There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall’,...  read more

This remarkable book begins dramatically and truthfully: ‘A monstrous child is blocking my view and has carved a nest in the soft darkness of my head. It eats the hours, this child, leaving me only crumbs.’ Motherhood can be overwhelming, however longed for. It is never a small thing, even if the rest of the world chooses to ignore it or view it as a block to professionalism. Cyril Connolly’s remark in Enemies of Promise (1938), ‘There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall’, was, of course, a reference to male creativity. But women have routinely been brainwashed into concurring with this dismissive observation – made, admittedly, before Connolly had children. In the 1950s, respected male tutors in colleges of art would dismiss female making as ‘frustrated maternity’. The sculptor Reg Butler asked Slade School of Fine Art students in 1962, ‘Can a woman become a vital creative artist without ceasing to be a woman except for the purposes of a census?’  

The 20th century proved a surprisingly bleak period for the recognition of women’s artistic activity. The flood of books on women artists which had appeared in the 19th century dwindled. And the women’s movement of the 1970s grappled with a peculiarly limited art world, characterised by exclusionary boundaries and plenty of straightforward misogyny. Art that celebrated or commented on motherhood was regarded as beyond the pale, even if presented in the dispassionate form of Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document (1973–9) or Susan Hiller’s Ten Months (1977–9). Of this record of her pregnancy, Hiller noted that few could ‘accept the right of a woman to be both the artist and the sexed subject of a work’.

Alexander Christie-Miller

The endless country: a personal journey through turkey’s first hundred years, by sami kent.

Turkey marked its centenary last year in muted fashion. Celebrations for the anniversary on 29 October were cut back due to ‘the alarming human tragedy in Gaza’, the state broadcaster said, though some claimed the true reason was that the country’s longtime leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is no fan of the Westernised, secular model of statehood imposed...  read more

Turkey marked its centenary last year in muted fashion. Celebrations for the anniversary on 29 October were cut back due to ‘the alarming human tragedy in Gaza’, the state broadcaster said, though some claimed the true reason was that the country’s longtime leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is no fan of the Westernised, secular model of statehood imposed by Atatürk a hundred years ago.

Whatever the truth, it often seems that there is little to celebrate in today’s Turkey. The country is mired in economic crisis, with inflation running at 70 per cent. It is riven by social tensions, culture wars and mass migration, and languishing in a state of fear and despondency under Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule. ‘Perhaps the cruellest part of the Turkey I had seen over the last few years’, writes Sami Kent in The Endless Country , a personal and idiosyncratic history of Turkey’s first century, is ‘the brute fact of unaccountable power, and how callously, how capriciously it decides the fate of others’.

Rosa Lyster

By ursula parrott.

How do marketing departments decide when to pitch a reissued novel as a ‘forgotten classic’? Does it need to have been greeted with acclaim the first time round before dropping out of view, or is it okay to define it as such even if it attracted little attention on first appearance, sitting around fretfully in second-hand bookshops and waiting for an excitable young agent to hold it to the light and discover that it has the weight and feel of a classic?...  read more

How do marketing departments decide when to pitch a reissued novel as a ‘forgotten classic’? Does it need to have been greeted with acclaim the first time round before dropping out of view, or is it okay to define it as such even if it attracted little attention on first appearance, sitting around fretfully in second-hand bookshops and waiting for an excitable young agent to hold it to the light and discover that it has the weight and feel of a classic?

Kay Dick’s They (‘the radical dystopian classic, lost for forty years’) falls into the second category. Initially, critics were dismissive or indifferent, sales were bad and the novel disappeared almost before anyone had noticed it was there. Caroline Blackwood’s The Fate of Mary Rose , soon to be reissued by Virago, falls into the first. Widely and favourably reviewed, it was published in several languages before going out of print. Ursula Parrott’s 1929 novel Ex-Wife (‘a forgotten classic … darkly funny’) is a more complicated case – not so much a once-acclaimed book searching for a new generation of readers as a racy bestseller looking for a home in the literary fiction section.

Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water

By vicki valosik.

When F Scott Fitzgerald fell in love with Zelda Sayre in the late 1910s, he was as impressed by her courage on the high diving board as by her flesh-coloured silk swimming costume. Her fearlessness and strength were part of her allure. During the late 19th and 20th centuries, as Vicki Valosik shows in Swimming Pretty, water was a hugely important arena for women seeking...  read more

When F Scott Fitzgerald fell in love with Zelda Sayre in the late 1910s, he was as impressed by her courage on the high diving board as by her flesh-coloured silk swimming costume. Her fearlessness and strength were part of her allure. During the late 19th and 20th centuries, as Vicki Valosik shows in Swimming Pretty , water was a hugely important arena for women seeking to assert their autonomy and independence.

Ostensibly a history of synchronised swimming – renamed artistic swimming in 2017 – Valosik’s fascinating book opens in London in the 1850s, when the enterprising superintendent of a new ‘natatorium’, hoping to attract more visitors to his swimming pool, began inviting families to ‘aquatic entertainments’ at which his children performed in races and galas. In 1875 his fourteen-year-old daughter, Agnes Beckwith, swam five miles from London Bridge to Greenwich, blowing kisses to cheering onlookers on the riverbanks. A hundred years later, Sports Illustrated magazine hailed this feat as the start of women’s participation in spectator sports.

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Gauguin and polynesia, by nicholas thomas, charles foster, why animals talk: the new science of animal communication, by arik kershenbaum, howard davies, pax economica: left-wing visions of a free trade world, by marc-william palen, money capital: new monetary principles for a more prosperous society, by patrick bolton & haizhou huang, from the archives, from the march 2020 issue, peter conrad, warhol: a life as art, by blake gopnik.

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Christopher hitchens, some times in america, by alexander chancellor.

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Hilary mantel, what am i doing here, by bruce chatwin.

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Best Literary Magazines for Book Lovers

Updated 09-19-2023

Whether you're a new writer looking for inspiration, a publishing industry professional, or a major bookworm looking for your next read, you've come to the right place. We've compiled a list of literary magazines readers should be aware of. These titles have it all: detailed literary reviews, short stories, award-winning author interviews, and beyond. Keep reading to find the best fit for you - one story might have you hooked! View our collection of literary magazines for some of the best digital and print magazines on the market.

For valuable synopses and reviews you can trust, Bookmarks Magazine is the ultimate literary magazine! A busy lifestyle makes it hard to find time to search for your next read. Bookmarks Magazine makes it easy, featuring:

• Over 500 book reviews a month.
• The latest fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and classics - providing.
• Book recommendations for every taste!
• Emerging writer profiles and interviews.

Discover what other book clubs are reading - you might find your next bestseller! You can't go wrong with this magazine - subscribe today!

The London Review of Books

The London Review of Books Magazine is known worldwide for wit, elegance, and fearlessness. This literary journal covers:

• The latest short fiction, excellent poetry, and lively opinion pieces.
• Reviews of leading books, art exhibitions, and movies.
• Features on politics, history, philosophy, science, and technology.

With articles curated by leading scholars, thinkers, and writers, The London Review is the destination for the best writers to congregate and share knowledge. Book lovers of all genres will enjoy a subscription - purchase a subscription today!

The New Yorker

Though known for its stellar reporting on current events, culture, and the arts, The New Yorker Magazine is an excellent choice for a more well-rounded magazine. Apart from politics, international news, and entertainment articles, The New Yorker publishes fiction, essays, satire, and more. In each issue, discover:

• Excellent flash fiction, essays, and other published work.
• Crossword puzzles to enjoy between news.
• Hilarious cartoons and satire.

Get the best of New York (and the country!) with a subscription to The New Yorker!

The Paris Review-Digital

Since 1953, The Paris Review-Digital Magazine has brought creative writing to the foreground, focusing on excellent writing and the writers behind the work. Each issue of this digital literary magazine features:

• The best fiction, poetry, art, and essays.
• Variety of work from well-known and emerging writers.
• Insight from the writers and artists themselves in Writers at Work interviews.

Get the latest art news, high-quality imagery, and work from some of the best voices in literature. Purchase a subscription to The Paris Review-Digital today!

The Threepenny Review-Digital

As the cornerstone of elegance since 1980, The Threepenny Review-Digital Magazine covers the best of art and society. Dive into each digital issue for:

• Excellent short stories, essays, poems, and memoirs.
• Coverage of books, theater, film, music, and more.
• Regular writing from Nobel Prize-winners, U.S. Poet Laureates, and well-known authors.

With beautiful black-and-white photographs and easily accessible issues, this digital magazine subscription is perfect for fans of elegant literature. Subscribe to The Threepenny Review today!

Booklist Reader-Digital

If you're looking for innovative book recommendations for your library, look no further than Booklist Reader-Digital Magazine ! Each issue of this digital magazine:

• Offers diverse recommendations for books and audiobooks.
• Helps librarians choose books for book lovers of all types and ages.
• Accepts applications to become a reviewer - no library degree required.

Subscribe to Booklist Reader today and find the perfect next choice for your book discussion group! For more guidance, subscribe to Booklist - Digital Magazine , an imprint of the American Library Association and a trusted resource for librarians, teachers, and readers.

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Are you a fan of sci-fi books' fantastic, otherworldly features? Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine is for you! Highly respected in the field, this literary magazine:

• Features outspoken, humorous, and excellent at curating a world of its own.
• Publishes fiction from leading and up-and-coming writers.
• Introduced classic SF stories like Stephen King's Dark Tower, Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, and much more!

Get the latest offerings and opinions on new books, films, and science with a new subscription!

Do you have a young one who loves to read? Cricket Magazine is the ultimate children's literary and poetry magazine, perfect for ages 9-14. Some fun features:

• Created with extra durability and a soft cover, perfect for dozens of reads throughout the years.
• The finest fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and illustrations.
• Help readers develop their creativity and inspires them to write their own stories.
• They can even enter contests with their creative writing submissions!

Purchase a subscription to this Parents' Choice Gold Award Winner today ! For younger readers, try Spider (for ages 6-9), Ladybug (for ages 3-6), and Babybug (for ages six months-3 years).

Oxford American-Digital

Published by The Oxford American Literary Project, Inc., Oxford American-Digital Magazine features the best in Southern writing. Each issue presents:

• American short fiction writers
• Original writing by some of the country's top writers
• The best American short stories from the region.
• The complexity and vitality of the South.

If you enjoy American short fiction, this is the subscription for you: purchase here!

Purchase a Subscription through MagazineLine! Browse our complete collection of magazines. Are you looking for more options for writers? View our list of the Best Magazines for Writers! Magazines that accept online submissions: Most of the titles listed above accept submissions.

• Bookmarks : accepts letters to the editor, reader recommendations, and book club submissions.
• London Review of Books: accepts unsolicited submissions and proposals.
• The New Yorker : accepts fiction, poetry, and cartoon submissions.
• The Paris Review-Digital : accepts unsolicited prose and poetry submissions at different times of the year. All submissions must be in English and unpublished, at most six poems at a time.
• The Threepenny Review-Digital : accepts submissions only during their reading period (January 1st-April 30th).
• Booklist Reader : subscribers must apply to become a Booklist reviewer.
• Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine : accepts surprising short stories in fantasy, sci-fi, horror, humor, and other genres.
• Cricket Magazine : accepts submissions from writers of every experience level (but no simultaneous submissions).
• Oxford American-Digital: accepts fiction and nonfiction submissions.

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Read Harder 2020: An Edition of a Literary Magazine (Digital or Physical)

Emily Polson

Emily Polson is a freelance writer and publishing assistant at Simon & Schuster. Originally from central Iowa, she studied English and creative writing at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, before moving to a small Basque village to teach English to trilingual teenagers. Now living in Brooklyn, she can often be found meandering through Prospect Park listening to a good audiobook. Twitter: @emilycpolson | https://emilycpolson.wordpress.com/

View All posts by Emily Polson

This list of literary magazines for the 2020 Read Harder Challenge is sponsored by TBR: Tailored Book Recommendations .

Literary magazines—also called literary journals or lit mags—play an important role in the literary ecosystem. Many publish emerging writers alongside established ones, offering valuable exposure and prestige to those just starting out. If you look in the back matter of any collection of short stories, poetry, or essays, you’ll often find a list of magazines and journals where many of these works first appeared.

Most literary magazines are available on a subscription basis, but there are other options for getting your hands on a copy. Many offer you the option to purchase a single back issue. Your local library might be a subscriber, so you can also check what literary journals they carry alongside other popular periodicals. To make access even easier, many lit mags are available online for free—either in whole or part—and some are online only.

The following nine recommendations represent the range of literary magazines out there: print and digital, single-genre and multi-genre, long and short, serious and humorous, and more.

Literary Magazines by Genre

Creative nonfiction.

Creative Nonfiction ’s tagline serves as a definition for the genre as a whole: “True stories, well told.” Published four times a year, this lit mag features short and long-form essays, interviews, criticism, and “tiny truths”—micro essays pulled from the #cnftweet hashtag on Twitter. Each issue centers around a common theme, such as sex, home, and risk. Back issues of Creative Nonfiction are sold for $10.00 each.

POETRY Magazine

POETRY magazine, published by the Poetry Foundation, has an illustrious history dating back to 1912. It was the first to publish such notable poems as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot, “Fever 103” by Sylvia Plath, and “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks. The magazine carries this legacy into the future, publishing the poets writing today who will be anthologized in the future. Each issue features dozens of poems by new and established poets, along with a selection of art and essays, making it the perfect way to engage with the contemporary poetry scene. The magazine’s entire archive is available online at no cost , so you could read any number of historic issues to complete this Reader Harder task! If you prefer to read in print, you can snag a back issue for $3.75.

One Story is a fiction literary magazine that offers exactly what its name implies: each monthly issue contains one story. Founded in 2002,  One Story  has published over 200 shorts, many of which have made their way into “best of” anthologies. They also publish teen writers in their One Teen Story version of the magazine, which makes a great entry point into lit mags for younger audiences or YA readers. Back issues of One Story  are available for just $2.50.

Classic Literary Magazines

The paris review.

The Paris Review is a quarterly literary magazine founded in 1953 that publishes short fiction, poetry, the occasional essay, art/photography, and interviews with writers. You may be familiar with their archived interview series “ The Art of Fiction ,” which has featured some of the most notable writers of the last century. Back issues are available for $20 a piece, but you can also find quite a bit of  Paris Review content on their website . This includes their Poetry Rx column (run by poets Sarah Kay, Kaveh Akbar, and Claire Schwartz), monthly “Feminize Your Canon” column, and nonfiction-centered blog, The Daily .

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern

When I told my roommate I was writing this article, she said I had to include McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (founded in 1998). Why? The sheer quirk in the packaging makes this fiction and nonfiction literary journal stand out from the rest. Issue 53 , for example, came packed with 8 balloons featuring short stories from the likes of Lauren Groff, Carmen Maria Machado, and Rebecca Makkai. You must inflate the balloons to read the stories, obviously (just because it’s “literary” doesn’t mean it can’t be fun!). Issue 33 was presented as a full-size newspaper. While these are some of the more out-there examples, each issue has a unique look and offers a breadth of quality writing from voices you know and those you’ll be hearing more about soon.

The Kenyon Review

The Kenyon Review is a highly respected American literary magazine that has been around since 1939. It has a history of publishing influential writers early in their career, including Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell. Today, the flagship print magazine comes out six times a year, but the brand has extended to a digital site called KROnline that publishes new content every two weeks and an offshoot review site called KR Reviews that focuses on small and indie press publications. Print and digital back issues of the magazine are available for $5–15, depending on the format.

Free Online Literary Magazines

If you like your fiction with a twist of genre, check out Tor.com. This online literary magazine publishes science fiction and fantasy alongside critical writing and commentary on these genres. Content is published daily rather than in a traditional issue, so you can dip your toes into content on various parts of the site to complete this Read Harder task. Not sure where to dive in? You could always pick up a copy of Worlds Seen in Passing , a 576-page anthology featuring some of the best from Tor.com’s last ten years.

The Rumpus is an online literary magazine featuring a wide range of writing, including essays, poetry, fiction, book reviews, interviews, and comics. Writers you know and love have been regular contributors to the site, including Roxane Gay and Cheryl Strayed , whose book Tiny Beautiful Things came from her “Dear Sugar” Rumpus advice column. The site has several ongoing series focused on highlighting the voices of women and non-binary writers, including their “ Funny Women ” humor series and “ Enough ,” a series dedicated to writing focused on issues of violence and rape culture.

Undergraduate Literary Magazines

Most undergraduate institutions publish some kind of literary journal, including your alma mater (if you have one). How many of us have actually read ours, though? If you breezed past your school’s lit mag, why not track down a copy from one of the years you were in school or pick up a recent issue? This is a great way to support the work of the student editors who curate the magazines and also the emerging talent published in them. Before Angie Thomas published her blockbuster bestseller The Hate U Give , her short stories were featured in my school’s literary magazine, The Brogue . You never know what gems you’ll discover when you peep through the table of contents on back issues of your school’s!

Looking for even more options for literary journals you can try for this Read Harder task? Check out Christina’s “ Literary Magazines 101 ” post or this extensive listing of magazines on Poets & Writers !

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With eight bonus pages, the July 2024 issue of World Literature Today presents International Horror Fiction in Translation, guest-edited by Rachel Cordasco. The cover feature gathers stories from Japan, Argentina, Egypt, and Sweden. Additional highlights include interviews, essays, booklists, and poetry. The book review section rounds up the best new books from around the world, and additional interviews, poetry, and essays offer indispensable summer reading.

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Sergey Gandlevsky. Trans. Philip Metres

A Question of Belonging

Hebe Uhart. Trans. Anna Vilner

The Silver Bone: A Novel

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With My Back to the World: Poems

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A Proclamation for Peace in Many Languages

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Trish Hopkinson

A selfish poet, where to submit book reviews–60 lit mags/journals.

Reviews are a great way to prompt yourself to think critically about a work–to spend more time with something you love, or well, maybe don’t so much. You can check out the reviews I’ve written here , including Paisley Rekdal’s most recent poetry collection Nightingale , published by Copper Canyon Press.

Click here for review writing tips and “A list of places that like book reviews” by Alina Stefanescu.

If you like this post, please share with your writerly friends and/or  follow me on  Facebook ,  Twitter , or  Instagram . You can see all the FREE resources my site offers poets/writers on my  Start Here  page. 

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Categories: Call for Submissions , Poetry Reviews , Self-taught MFA

Tagged as: book reviews , chapbook reviews , No Fee Call for Submissions , Paying Call for submissions , Poetry Book Reviews

17 replies »

Hi! Please add Tinderbox to this?

OMG, how did I miss that! Thank you!

Excellent article. This team golfwell does free book reviews too https://www.teamgolfwell.com/free-book-reviews.html

Excellent article and very well done and thank you for taking the time to write this. FYI Team Golfwell does free book review https://www.teamgolfwell.com/free-book-reviews.html

Trish, this is fantastic. Thank you so much! You rock! This is a tremendous service to authors. all best wishes, Diane Frank

You're so welcome!

This list will really be useful to me and your other followers. Thank you so much!

Thank you, Trish, for your information and ever-present enthusiasm. If any book reviewers on Trish’s list would be receptive to reviewing new poetry titles (from 2 tiny indie presses), books whose Spring 2020 launch was crippled by COVID-19, I would be delighted to send you either or both — and also throw in a free dinner [by way of an American Express “Be My Guest” dining out certificate]. My two titles are an Elgin Award nominee “A Route Obscure and Lonely” [Wapshott Press; 62 pgs; speculative poetry] — and — “Concupiscent Consumption” [Red Ferret Press; 34-page chapbook; erotic verses]. Happy to send actual paperbacks and/or digital versions. You can preview these on Amazon.

Good wishes from New York, LindaAnn LoSchiavo

Hi, please add Prospectus to this list!

Will do! I will add it next week

• Pingback: How to Write a Book Review in Ten Easy Steps (just kidding; it's not always easy) – guest blog post by Eileen “Mish” Murphy – Trish Hopkinson
• Pingback: How to Write a Book Review in Ten Easy Steps (just kidding; it's not always easy) - guest blog post by Eileen "Mish" Murphy - Trish Hopkinson – What’s New Magazine
• Pingback: My review of ‘The Truth Is’ by Avery M. Guess published by Diode + submission call! – Trish Hopkinson
• Pingback: 6 Thoughts on Reviewing Poetry + tips & where to submit reviews – guest blog post by Alina Stefanescu – Trish Hopkinson
• Pingback: 6 Thoughts on Reviewing Poetry + tips & where to submit reviews - guest blog post by Alina Stefanescu - Trish Hopkinson – What’s New Magazine

Thank you, Trish! This is a tremendous help to authors and reviewers.

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Written by S. Kalekar January 28th, 2019

16 Magazines Accepting Books for Review

These are literary and other magazines and websites that accept books for review. So if you’re an author looking to promote your fiction, poetry, or nonfiction book, these are places that could review your work; some of them also have author interview sections. Sending a book doesn’t guarantee a review, however, and they often review only specific kinds or genres of books, so make sure you check out their guidelines and the website/magazine for the kinds of books they review. These magazines do not charge authors for the reviews they publish, or they have fee-free options.

Publishers Weekly Books must have US distribution to be considered. They review nonfiction, fiction, mystery/thriller, science fiction/fantasy/horror, romance/erotica, poetry, comics, and lifestyles (cooking, gardening & home, health & fitness, or parenting). Children’s titles have their own guidelines, as do Canadian books. They consider self-published books for review via BookLife , which also has a services directory for advertising, marketing and others for Indie authors. They do not review audiobooks, textbooks, technical manuals, reissues or new editions unless 60% or more of the content is new, reference books, books of strictly regional interest, travel guides, media and game tie-ins, journals, coloring books, devotionals and prayer books, or playscripts and dramatic works. There is a specific lead time for galleys/books/bound manuscripts to be sent before publication, in the guidelines. Details here .

Neon Books Neon Books is a UK-based independent publisher, working with authors anywhere in the world, and producing a small number of chapbooks, pamphlets and other ephemera each year – they lean towards literary and slipstream writing, with a preference for the magical realist and the extremely odd. They also have one of the longest-running independent literary magazines in the UK, and a review blog. They accept small press books, poetry, novellas, collections, anthologies and anything that is a bit in-between for review on their blog. If authors/publicists like to have something reviewed on the blog, they should send a query. Details here .

The Quarterly Conversation This is a magazine that publishes book reviews, essays, and interviews that address literature from original and provocative perspectives – they do not publish fiction or poetry. They review fiction and nonfiction, so long as the books are of literary and/or cultural value. They are especially interested in books that have been translated into English, and particularly in works translated from traditionally neglected nations or languages. They are also interested in out of print works of literature that have recently been brought back into print. They ask publishers to ideally submit books prior to publication, but they run reviews of titles up to a year old. Details here .

Necessary Fiction They publish book reviews each Monday, a featured short story each Wednesday, a contribution to their Research Notes series each Friday, and occasional interviews, essays, and other surprises. They are especially interested in reviewing fiction from independent publishers, with a moderate emphasis on short story collections, novellas and translations. Self-published authors are welcome to submit their books. Their focus is on literary fiction for adult readers, broadly defined, and they say they probably aren’t a good fit for books in other genres or for younger readers. For their Research Notes series, they invite the author of a recent book of fiction to reflect on the “research” behind it, and for their Translation Notes series, they invite translators of literary fiction to write about the process of bringing a book into English. Publishers, authors, or publicists wanting to submit a book for consideration are asked to query. Details here .

The Malahat Review This magazine publishes reviews of Canadian-authored books of poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction in every issue, apart from fiction, nonfiction, poetry and translations. They rarely publish articles and interviews. Publishers and authors may send copies of their new titles by mail for potential review. Email announcements of new titles are also welcome. They say that they receive over 200 books every year; between 25 and 38 of them are reviewed. Details here .

Strange Horizons They publish in-depth reviews of speculative art and entertainment, especially books, films, and television, three times a week. They normally cover new works, although they do occasional features on older works. They are especially interested in reviews of worthy material that might not otherwise get the exposure it deserves, and in reviews of works that push traditional genre boundaries. They ask those wishing to submit a review copy to query by sending a short description of the work over email. They accept both physical and electronic review copies and try to match reviewers with the work. Details here .

Existere Journal of Art and Literature This biannual journal of art and literature publishes artwork, poetry, short plays, short stories, postcard/flash fiction, art and literature reviews, critical essays, interviews, sketches, photos, etc. They receive books for review and books to be considered for any forthcoming issue should arrive at their office no later than two months before the deadline for each issue, in order for them to have time to give it a look and write a review. Details here .

Book Reporter The majority of the reviews on their website are fiction. They review bestsellers, debut authors, contemporary fiction, historical fiction, mysteries, thrillers, some fantasy/science fiction and some romance. They also review nonfiction, newsworthy books, biographies and memoirs. They generally do not review how-to, self-help, medical/health, religion, or travel guides. They review self-published books on a select basis – these must be available with wide distribution offline as well as online. They rarely cover ebook-only titles. Besides Bookreporter.com, The Book Report Network is comprised of other online book review and author feature sites, including ReadingGroupGuides, where authors/publishers can provide their guides for a fee, as well as: — 20SomethingReads (includes, but is not limited to, new age, contemporary fiction, women’s fiction, humor/satire, memoirs and gift books); — Teenreads (largely fiction for teens aged 12-18, some nonfiction, select self-published titles, rarely ebooks); — Kidsreads (typically fiction for children aged 6-12, some nonfiction, and on a select basis, select self-published books, rarely ebooks, and books for slightly younger readers, though not picture books – they do have a monthly round-up of picture books, but these are not reviewed); — GrapicNovelReporter (graphic novels, can review books or galleys)

Typically books are reviewed within three months of publication. Details here .

QBR the Black Book Review They are dedicated to books about the African experience. Their website says, “In its pages you will find fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s books, health and lifestyle management, writers from Africa and the Caribbean–the whole of the Diaspora, the whole of our experience. How do you know who the newest authors are? How do you know what to read? Do you still wait for second hand “word of mouth” recommendations for the books you read? How do you know which books are good for your children? QBR is your reliable source for what is current in Black books.” QBR also produces the Harlem Book Fair, held annually in New York City and throughout the US. They have paid author promotion services but the reviews (books for review selected at their discretion) are free. Details here .

London Review of Books This magazine publishes some of the world’s best writers, and publishes book reviews, reportage, poems, reviews of exhibitions and movies, ‘short cuts’, letters and a diary. They accept books for review. They cannot review ebooks. Details here .

New York Review of Books This prestigious magazine publishes essays and reviews of books and the arts, including music, theater, dance, and film, and they accept books for review. When a book is reviewed, they send copies of the review to the book’s publisher. Details here (click on the ‘Editorial’ tab under Frequently Asked Questions).

filling Station This is a literary and arts magazine publishing innovative poetry, fiction, nonfiction (creative and critical nonfiction, reviews, articles, interviews, live event reviews, photo essays, etc). The magazine is produced in Canada and their mandate is to support emerging writers. They will generally not accept reviews of non-experimental literature unless the review itself is experimental – they are looking to engage with and draw attention to literature that pushes the boundaries of genre, form, methodology, style, etc. They provide an address for those wishing to submit books for review, and say that filling Station is interested in works of experimental or otherwise innovative poetry, fiction and nonfiction. They also provide an email address if writers or publishers wish to query about the books that fS seeks to review before sending in review copies. Details here .

Ethos Literary Journal This is a bi-annual literary journal of fiction, nonfiction, as well as book and film reviews. Their website says that the journal aims to “reflect the truest ethos of the current times – the quintessential yet varied, fast-diversifying yet emblematic, “spirit,” so to speak, of the exciting post-modernist times we are living in.” They ask publishers or authors wishing to submit books for review to query first over email with details of the book, and they may request a copy or two. Details here .

Hippocampus Magazine This is a magazine of nonfiction and creative nonfiction, and they have certain fee-free submission periods and categories for writers. They review new memoirs, creative nonfiction anthologies and craft books. If writers/publishers would like them to consider an upcoming/recent book for review or for an interview, they should send an email query, or post the books to them for review. They do not review self-published titles, or books that are exclusively available online. Details here .

Identity Theory This is an online magazine that publishes short fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews, as well as book and film reviews. They also have a social justice section and blog. They ask those wishing to send a review copy to contact them for an address to send copies to. Details here .

EcoLit Books This is a community passionate about books with environmental and animal rights themes, supported by Ashland Creek Press. They review literature relating to environment and animal rights in all genres, from fiction to poetry to nonfiction. They consider queries only from publishers, for receiving books to review. Details here .

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June 11, 2024

Free Talk: An Introduction to Publishing Your Writing in Literary Journals

You can download the slides here, and take a look at the sample submission tracker here. Shannan Mann is the Founding Editor of ONLY POEMS. She has been awarded or placed for the Palette Love and Eros Prize, Rattle Poetry Prize, and Auburn Witness Poetry Prize among others. Her poems appear in Poetry Daily, EPOCH,…

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31 Themed Submission Calls and Contests for August 2024

These are themed calls and contests for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Some call themes are: fairy tales; harbinger; vacations; Little Red Flags – Stories of Cults, Cons, and Control; creature features; tumbleweed; secrets of the snow globe; vampires; and Achilles. Some deadlines are approaching quickly. THEMED SUBMISSION CALLS Orange & BeeThis is an Australian Substack-based…

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Major publishers and small presses accepting direct submissions. No agent required.

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A new online literary journal seeking writing with "philosophical value."

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The Best Reviewed Books of the Month: July 2024

Featuring new books from juliet grames, flynn berry, jesse katz, and more..

A look at the month’s best reviewed crime fiction, nonfiction, mystery, and thrillers. From Book Marks .

Juliet Grames, The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia (Knopf)

“Deeply compelling, well-crafted … Yet the literary heart of this brilliant novel, its probing meditations on class, power, and the inevitability of crime, is rendered with the same nuance and intensity as Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet.”

–Olivia Kate Corrine ( Boston Globe )

Flynn Berry, Trust Her (Viking)

“Reading Trust Her is difficult. It’s riveting, scary, horrifying. You put down the book, unable to read another word, and then pick it up again almost instantly. Berry is a past-master at ratcheting up tension.

–Janet Webb ( Criminal Element )

Ruby Todd, Bright Objects (Simon & Schuster)

“Smart, propulsively readable … Todd knows how to draw readers in. Her prose is elegant but accessible, her narrative embraces both mystery and quick plot pivots, and her protagonist, though flawed, remains sympathetic. And Todd’s grip only tightens as the story turns downright chilling.”

–Julia M. Klein ( The Los Angeles Times )

Jesse Katz, The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA (Astra House)

“Katz has constructed an ethnography of the crime, locating it within the intricate lacework of history, geography, policing and politics that the crime was knotted to … Katz…brings his formidable skills to mapping the territory of Macedo’s crime … Katz has constructed a riveting and masterful urban narrative … Sets out to understand an evil act and asks whether atonement and redemption are possible for the person who did it. It finds a web of meaning in which all of us are suspended, implying that many other crimes could be understood in such a holistic way if we took the time. As much as is possible after such a senseless tragedy, Katz makes some sense out of that September day.”

–Lorraine Berry ( The Los Angeles Times )

Dan Slater, The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld (Little Brown and Co.)

“Exuberant … Write[s] in a breezy, fast-paced style. [He] revel[s] in the Dickensian details of the demimonde—the colorful lingo, intricate professional techniques and social snobberies of the criminal classes—looping through decades of political and economic history that spills over into chatty footnotes.”

–Debby Applegate ( The New York Times Book Review )

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The Nazis Came for France Once. Not Everyone There Was Upset About It.

In “Paris 1944,” Patrick Bishop tells the story of the German occupation during World War II, with equal attention to French resisters and collaborators.

Adolf Hitler with the architect Albert Speer, left, and the sculptor Arno Breker, right, in 1940. Credit... German War Department, via Associated Press

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By Nina Siegal

Nina Siegal is a freelance arts journalist based in Amsterdam and a regular contributor to The Times. Her latest book is “The Diary Keepers: World War II in the Netherlands, as Written by the People Who Lived Through It.”

• Published Aug. 4, 2024 Updated Aug. 5, 2024
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PARIS 1944: Occupation, Resistance, Liberation, by Patrick Bishop

The Liberation of Paris in 1944 is an undeniably alluring subject, especially in the wake of the recent French elections. In July, a coalition of left-wing parties mounted a stunning, last-minute rebuke to what was shaping up to be the country’s first far-right government since World War II .

We’ve long nurtured the romantic image of Parisians taking up arms against fascist occupiers, complete with black-and-white photo montages. Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa provided the documentary snapshots; Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall suggested the glamorous characters.

Still, beyond recounting the chaotic exuberance of that week in August 1944 — the labor strikes, the acts of sabotage, the police rebellion — the question for historians trying to approach the subject now is how they will surprise us.

The British military historian and former war correspondent Patrick Bishop doesn’t offer a bold new analysis in his social history of the period, “Paris 1944.” Instead, he aims to highlight the symbolic power of that mythic city, by drawing the reader into the streets of Paris just in time for the 80th anniversary of its liberation.

Although it looked a lot like a people’s revolt against Nazi tyranny when the once-exiled Gen. Charles de Gaulle strode down the Champs-Élysées to Notre-Dame Cathedral on Aug. 26, 1944, scholars have long observed that it would have amounted to little without help from the Allies.

France was as divided then as it is today, and some Parisians were happy to go along with the new Nazi-backed regime . After the war, de Gaulle tried to paint a picture of a unified France under the yoke of Nazi occupation, the people fighting a tyranny imposed from without. That image persisted, but thanks to the historian Robert O. Paxton’s pioneering scholarship and Marcel Ophuls’s documentary film “The Sorrow and the Pity,” we now know how greatly exaggerated this story was.

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The 50 Best Romance Novels to Read Right Now

Irresistible picks for readers of all kinds of romance, from enemies-to-lovers to marriage of convenience to just one bed

Romance Novels Are Literature

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The Wedding Date

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Ayesha at Last

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Forget Me Not

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Get a Life, Chloe Brown

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Red, White & Royal Blue

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The Flatshare

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The Duke Who Didn’t

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Before I Let Go

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This project is led by Lucy Feldman, Annabel Gutterman, Megan McCluskey, and Meg Zukin, with additional writing and reporting by Judy Berman, Shannon Carlin, Mahita Gajanan, Kari Sonde, and Olivia B. Waxman; photography editing by Kara Milstein; art direction by Katie Kalupson and Chelsea Kardokus; video by Brian Braganza, Man Sum Lai, Joseph Lautrup, Lisa Nho, and Erica Solano; production by Nadia Suleman; commerce strategy by Alexandra Miguel; photography by Rachel Stern for TIME.

Locus Online

The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field

Ian Mond Reviews The Underhistory by Kaaron Warren

The publication of a new novel from Kaaron Warren is an event worthy of fanfare. She’s one of the rare few – Kirstyn McDermott is another – who can blend literary and horror fiction without undermining the strengths of either. It makes for a reading experience that’s both deep and textured, but also taut and brutal. The Underhistory has all this and more, a layered novel about memories and ghosts, of the stories and secrets impregnated into the foundations, the rooms and foreboding cellar of the Sinclair House.

In 1941, nine-year-old Temperance ‘‘Pera’’ Sinclair witnesses a plane plough, nose first, into the family house. ‘‘It sat at an angle, not like a straight stick in the ground but like one that was bent sideways, like when the tomatoes got too heavy for their stake.’’ Inside the house wasn’t just her family, her parents and sisters – not Hazel, though, she was already dead, murdered by her boyfriend – but also friends, including the Prime Minister of Australia and his wife. Warren never refers to the PM by name, but the mention of his wife Patty and the suggestion that he was a little on the nose strongly suggests Robert Menzies, who was forced to resign in 1941, replaced by John Curtin. It’s worth noting that Menzies and his wife were not incinerated by a plummeting plane (in fact, Menzies would go on to become Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister).

I can appreciate why Warren makes this adjust­ment to history. Being the lone survivor of such a catastrophic event, one with political and national repercussions, is something no person could ever shake. And that’s the case with Pera. She is hound­ed right after the incident – never given the time or space to mourn her family – and decades later, she remains a source of fascination for the public and the media. Rather than become a recluse, Pera leans into her fame. Left a sizeable inheritance by her father – the financial adviser to the Prime Minister – she rebuilds the Sinclair House. Each room becomes a memorial to the dead, including her husband (who died in the house in the 1970s) and Italian families interned during World War Two who lived in the shed beside the house. It’s now 1993, and Pera, in her sixties, guides tourists and the curious through her home, chilling them with tales of the dead, the smells, the creaks, the whispers (craftily curated by Pera) – ‘‘evidence’’ of the ghosts that haunt the sprawling residence. But when five escaped convicts break into the house during a tour – expecting it to be empty – family secrets, including Pera’s, will be forced shockingly, violently into the light.

Technically, The Underhistory isn’t a haunted house novel. Pera’s theatrics aside, there’s a distinct lack of ghosts or anything remotely supernatural. And yet, The Underhistory has all the aesthetic qualities of the best haunted house fiction. Much like Hill House, Sinclair House, sitting at the cen­tre of the narrative, has a deep and tragic history further bolstered by a mythology curated by Pera. But it goes beyond the creepy tales (‘‘the underhis­tory’’) that Pera relates to her guests. As the story unwinds, as we move with the tour from room to room, we begin to lose any sense of continuity, of where each room is in relation to the other, such as ‘‘The Mint,’’ its walls lined with currency or ‘‘Lofty Heights,’’ a bedroom memorialising Pera’s murdered sister, or more horribly Hazel’s killer, scented with orange, suggestive of the peels he would carry in his pocket. It’s not just architectural anomalies; the house also has an uneasy relation­ship with time, not least because Pera stops any clock in her presence (an oddity with an extraor­dinary, shattering payoff involving a stopwatch). The house, of course, is reflective of its owner. A woman who has never willingly confronted her grief and trauma but instead revisits her ghosts, allowing them to define her.

But all that changes when the men come to visit, when they invade her house and force Pera to reckon with her past, particularly her unhealthy relationship with her husband (the brother of the boyfriend who killed Pera’s sister). This is also where Warren exhibits her horror chops. The final third of the novel sees the gradual dialling up of nail-biting tension erupt into violence. Not only do we come to appreciate how dangerous the men are, but we also witness what Pera is capable of. I’m not going to say too much more, other than to note that Pera isn’t the only one forced to face their ghosts, memories of trauma, pain and anger. The Underhistory is a tremendous example of top-shelf literary horror, rich and complex in theme, graphic and disturbing in execution.

Ian Mond loves to talk about books. For eight years he co-hosted a book podcast, The Writer and the Critic, with Kirstyn McDermott. Recently he has revived his blog, The Hysterical Hamster , and is again posting mostly vulgar reviews on an eclectic range of literary and genre novels. You can also follow Ian on Twitter (@Mondyboy) or contact him at [email protected] .

This review and more like it in the July 2024 issue of Locus .

©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.

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CLMP Awards Grants to 46 Literary Publishers

The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses will award $350,000 in capacity-building grants to 46 nonprofit literary magazines and presses across the United States. Recipients will receive grants of $5,000 or $10,000 to support projects that build organizational capacity and ensure greater sustainability. The Capacity-Building Grant Program is made possible with funding from Hawthornden Foundation.

The grant recipients are:

Apogee Journal , $5,000

Archipelago Books , $10,000

Aunt Lute Books , $5,000

Bellevue Literary Press , $10,000

Bellevue Literary Review , $5,000

Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters , $10,000

Cardboard House Press , $5,000

CavanKerry Press , $10,000

Center for the Art of Translation / Two Lines Press , $10,000

Coffee House Press , $10,000

Deep Vellum Publishing , $10,000

Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network , $10,000

The Drift  , $5,000

DSTL Arts , $5,000

Electric Literature , $10,000

The Evergreen Review , $5,000

F(r)iction , $10,000

The Feminist Press , $10,000

Fence Magazine , $5,000

Futurepoem , $5,000

Grid Books , $5,000

Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Art , $10,000

Haymarket Books , $5,000

The Hudson Review , $5,000

Los Angeles Review of Books , $10,000

Lucky Jefferson , $5,000

Lugar Comun , $10,000

Marsh Hawk Press , $5,000

McSweeney's , $10,000

Narrative   Magazine , $10,000

Nightboat Books , $10,000

Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora , $10,000

The Offing , $5,000

Omnidawn Publishing , $10,000

One Story , $10,000

Orion Magazine , $10,000

Oxford American , $5,000

Passager Books , $10,000

Restless Books , $5,000

The Rumpus , $10,000

Sarabande Books , $5,000

Sinister Wisdom , $5,000

Split This Rock , $5,000

SWWIM , $5,000

Trio House Press , $5,000

Ugly Duckling Presse , $10,000

The National Book Foundation will also be awarding capacity-building grants to 49 nonprofit literary organizations across the U.S. through a similar program. To learn more about the National Book Foundation’s grantees, visit their website .

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