Literary Magazines

Because there are thousands of literary magazines, we can’t begin to list them all. So we’ve listed the ones that stand-out to us. Of course, we list the biggies. But we also list the more eccentric, intriguing, inventive journals too. Big or small, the journals listed below have solid reputations in the industry and offer new and emerging writers a publishing haven for their work. Also, we recommend two great websites: NewPages.com Alternatives in Print & Media and Duotrope for finding more literary magazines as well as other alternative ways into print!

Alehouse
Each year, Alehouse Press publishes Alehouse, an all-poetry literary journal featuring a mix of poetry, essays on poetry, and poetry reviews from emerging and established writers.

Alimentum
The only literary review all about food. Fiction, Poetry, Creative NonFiction. Food in its finest form. Sating a loftier appetite. Savor the word of food.

AGNI
AGNI is the acclaimed literary magazine published at Boston University. Founded in 1972, the print journal is published twice a year and includes poetry, short fiction, and essays. AGNI Online is the electronic complement to the published version.

The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly Magazine has been a voice for the literate reader interested in the world around them for two centuries, and has won more National Magazine Awards than any other monthly magazine. However, it is no longer showcasing fiction in its print magazine, and fiction submissions will only be considered for its online fiction edition, put out once a year in August.

Barrelhouse
Barrelhouse is a print journal featuring fiction, poetry, interviews, and essays about music, art, and the detritus of popular culture. Barrelhouse is also a web site that regularly posts new short fiction, nonfiction, interviews, and random stuff.

The Bellevue Literary Review
The Bellevue Literary Review is published by the Department of Medicine at New York University and seeks to offer a forum for illuminating humanity and human experience. They invite submissions of previously unpublished works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that touch upon relationships to the human body, illness, health and healing, and encourage creative interpretation of these themes.

Bellingham Review
The Bellingham Review is a nonprofit literary arts magazine affiliated with Western Washington University. The editors welcome submissions of poems, stories, and essays, and there are no limitations on form or subject matter.

Berkeley Fiction Review
Berkeley Fiction Review UC Berkeley's official literary magazine and they are looking for fresh new voices in fiction. If it's different, if it breaks boundaries, if your English professor would hate it, by all means, send it to them!.

Camera Obscura
A biannual independent literary journal and internet haunt featuring contemporary literary fiction & photography. Contributors include established, as well as, emerging writers and photographers. AQ Commentary: and a really freaking impressive website.

Crazyhorse
For the past 40 years, Crazyhorse has published fine prose, poetry, and essays. The editors are especially interested in original writing that engages in the work of honest communication. They always ask "What’s at stake in this writing?" "What’s reckoned with that’s important for other people to read?" Crazyhorse reads year-round and welcomes submissions of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction/essays.

Ecotone
Ecotone is a literary journal of place that seeks to publish creative work about the environment and the natural world while avoiding the hushed tones and clichés of much of so-called nature writing.

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is amongst the world's longest-running short-story mystery magazines. Stories in EQMM have won numerous awards, including the Agatha, Anthony, Arthur Ellis, Derringer, Edgar, Macavity, Shamus, Derrick Murdoch, and Robert L. Fish awards. It represents the cutting edge in crime and mystery fiction, running the gamut of mystery's subgenres, from the classical whodunit to hardboiled private-eye tales to pure suspense.

Fiction Literary Review Magazine
The FictionWeek Literary Review is published twice a year, spring and fall by FictionWeek.com. The FictionWeek Literary Review is a venue for innovative fiction and poetry. They intend to primarily publish writing that breaks new ground by finding new ways to tell a story.

Fiction Magazine
Fiction Magazine has emerged over the years as a journal of future directions. In its thirty years of publication, it has posed serious questions, sometimes in absurd and comic voices, interrogating the nature of the real and fantastic. Fiction Magazine represents no particular school of fiction, except the innovative.

The Georgia Review
Since its inception in 1947, The Georgia Review has grown steadily to its current position as one of America's premier journals of arts and letters. Each quarterly issue offers a rich gathering of stories, essays, poems, book reviews, and visual art orchestrated to invite and sustain repeated readings.

Glimmer Train Stories
Founded in 1990 by two sisters, Glimmer Train seeks to publish emotionally meaningful stories that affect our view of the world and enlarge our perspectives on it. Each quarterly issue presents about 260 pages of literary fiction—eight to twelve brand new stories by luminaries and fresh new voices making their way into print.

The Greensboro Review
The Greensboro Review will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2006. They seek the best being written, regardless of theme, subject, or style.

Grist
Grist: The Journal for Writers, a new national literary annual arising with support from the creative writing program at the University of Tennessee, features world class fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, along with interviews with renowned writers, and essays about craft.

Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is one of America's oldest and most prestigious literary journals, publishing literature, politics, culture, and the arts published continuously since 1850.

The Heat City Review
The Heat City Review comes out two times a year, and publishes short fliction, flash fiction, poetry & anything else they like, alongside photographs.

Inkwell
Inkwell is published semiannually in the spring and fall by Manhattanville College and is staffed by faculty and graduate students of the writing program. Inkwell is dedicated to discovering new talent, and to encouraging and bringing the talents of working writers and artists to a wider audience. The journal encourages diverse voices and has an open submission policy for both art and literature. They accept unsolicited submissions in poetry, prose, and artwork.

The Iowa Review
The Iowa Review comes out three times a year (April, August, and December), carrying stories, poems, essays, and reviews. They look for the best writing available and are often pleased to introduce new writers.

Kaleidoscope Magazine
Kaleidoscope Magazine has a creative focus that examines the experiences of disability through literature and the fine arts. Although content always focuses on a particular aspect of disability, writers with and without disabilities are welcome to submit their work.

The Kenyon Review
The mission of The Kenyon Review is to identify exceptionally talented emerging writers, especially from diverse communities, and publish their work (fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, reviews, etc.) alongside the many distinguished, established writers featured in its pages.

Land-Grant College Review
The Land-Grant College Review is a New York-based print magazine of fiction, nonfiction and visual artwork.

Literal Latte
Debuting in June 1994 and offering 30,000 FREE copies of its literary brew in New York’s coffeehouses, bookstores and arts organizations, Literal Latté reaches ten times as many readers as traditional literary magazines. Literal Lattécaffeinates careers, bringing writers from around the world into the offices, homes and hands of New York’s publishing professionals, writers and readers.

MAKE
MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine. Chicago is a storyteller’s city, and MAKE is the story’s magazine. Chock full of fiction, poetry, essays, art, and reviews MAKE is substantial in both feel and scope. MAKE expands on the Chicago tradition to entertain and to inform.

The Mid-American Review
Founded in 1981, Mid-American Review is an international literary journal dedicated to publishing the best contemporary fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and translations. It is an official publication of the Department of English and the College of Arts & Sciences at Bowling Green State University.

The Missouri Review
Founded in 1978 and based at the University of Missouri, The Missouri Review is one of the most highly-regarded literary magazines and has an established reputation for finding and publishing the very best writers first.

n + 1
n + 1 n+1 is a thrice-yearly print journal of politics, literature, and culture. We are a literary magazine but we are interested above all in reports from all the various fields of human endeavor: medicine, computing, the law, sports, crime, art, finance, engineering, construction, music, etc. Please tell us and our readers what we do not know.

The New Yorker
The New Yorker is one of the country’s premier sources of literary fiction and social & political commentary.

Nimod International Journal
Nimod, founded in 1956 at the University of Tulsa, has been active in the discovery and publication of new writers for more than 40 years. They publish high-quality, literary poetry, prose, and short essays.

Notre Dame Review
The Notre Dame Review is an independent, non-commercial magazine of contemporary American and international fiction, poetry, criticism and art. Their goal is to present a panoramic view of contemporary art and literature, and are especially interested in work that takes on big issues by making the invisible seen.

North American Review
North American Review is the oldest literary magazine in America (founded in 1815) and one of the most respected. They are interested in high-quality poetry, fiction, and nonfiction on any subject; however, they are especially interested in work that addresses contemporary North American concerns and issues, particularly with the environment, race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

One Story
One Story is a literary journal based in New York City that publishes literary fiction between 3000 to 8000 words. They are looking for stories that leave readers feeling satisfied and are strong enough to stand alone.

Out of Our
Out of Our is a small quarterly poetry magazine edited and published out of San Francisco, CA. It keeps poetry alive by featuring familiar voices and by introducing the literary world to new and undiscovered underground poets.

The Paris Review
Founded in Paris by Harold L.Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton in 1953, The Paris Review is a venerable literary magazine that first published contemporary established authors Jack Kerouac, Adrienne Rich, Philip Roth, V.S. Naipaul, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Mona Simpson, Edward Jones, and Rick Moody. In addition to the focus on original creative work, the founding editors introduced another alternative to criticism—letting the authors talk about their work themselves through The Review’s Writers at Work interview series.

Ploughshares
Affiliated with Emerson College, Ploughshares is a literary print journal, publishing poetry and fiction and occasionally personal essays/memoirs. Each issue is guest-edited by a prominent writer who explores different and personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles. They seek world-class poetry and prose, the best that contemporary literature has to offer.

Potomac Review
Potomac Review: A Journal of Arts & Humanities invites submissions of poetry, prose, art, and photography that are expressions and voices of, or reactions to the human and physical terrain of the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond. They encourage submissions by writers and visual artists living in the region.

Prairie Schooner
Prairie Schooner is a national literary quarterly published with the support of the English Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Nebraska Press. It is home to the best fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews being published today by beginning, mid-career and established writers.

Santa Monica Review
Founded in 1988, Santa Monica Review is a nationally distributed literary arts journal sponsored by Santa Monica College. It currently features literary fiction and nonfiction, though in past years, it also included poetry. It features both first-time writers and established literary authors, with a focus on showcasing the work of Southern California and Pacific Rim writers.

Slice Magazine
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.

The Southern Review
The Southern Review publishes fiction, poetry, critical essays, interviews, book reviews, and excerpts from novels in progress, with emphasis on contemporary literature in the United States and abroad, and with special interest in southern culture and history.

Spinning Jenny
Founded in 1994 in New York City, Black Dress Press is an independent literary small press and the publisher of the literary magazine Spinning Jenny, an open forum for poetry and fiction. They are pleased to consider experimental writing and work by unpublished authors.

The Threepenny Review
The Threepenny Review publishes essays, poems, and new fiction. The appeal of the magazine lies in its offbeat combinations of the tried-and-true with the deeply unexpected.

Tin House
Founded in 1998, Tin House has offices in Portland and New York, and taps the energy of both coasts, with a concerted effort to reach beyond the scope of the incestuous publishing world of New York.

Zoetrope: All-Story
Zoetrope: All-Story is a quarterly literary publication founded by Francis Ford Coppola in 1997 to explore the intersection of story and art, fiction and film.

ZYZZYVA
ZYZZYVA offers writers the possibilities of individual vision; the enduring magic of words; the delight of variety; absolute freedom from commercial constraint. They accept submissions from writers living on the West Coast only (AK, HI, WA, OR, CA).

If you represent a literary magazine, and would like to be included on this weblist, please email us information about your literary magazine to updates@agentquery.com. In order to be included, you must publish some fiction, currently accept unsolicited submissions, and have a website.