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A lot of folks here are pretty prolific, but I wonder how many of us are really on the ball about doing something with our work once it's "complete." Literary journals (and the contests they run) can be a good outlet, so I thought perhaps I'd throw up a bunch of information and see if anyone finds it helpful. While this is mostly relevant to writers, many of the publications listed in this thread also accept submissions of visual art, photography, or even music. Tell us if you're submitting places. Let's celebrate together and, more regularly, stoically continue in the face of rejection together. General resources you might find useful: Duotrope, a Swiss Army knife of excellent information for writers of all stripes. NewPages, a website that reviews lit mags. The Review Review. Same as above. Winning Writers, which publishes a monthly list of contests. New Contests and Formal Calls for Submissions: Last Updated: Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013 Note: If a publication is listed here, it's because they've put out a press release of some sort. That generally means your chances here are higher than average. I cannot personally vouch for these publications or publishers, and I often have no experience with them myself. New Contests: Right here at home, Goonreads is having a contest to celebrate its first year and over 100 goon-authored books on its shelves. Check out the contest page for more information. The Carolina Quarterly wants your dispatches from the end of it all. Deadline is December 31st. The grand prize winner will receive $1000. Three runners-up will receive $150 each. All winners will be published in an upcoming issue and featured in their online edition. Contest entry fee is $15, or $25 with a one-year subscription to the Quarterly. The Juniper Prize for Poetry ends September 30th. $1500 to the winner. $15 entry fee. New Calls for submissions: The University of Pennsylvania is putting together a new poetry anthology with a focus on hospital patients. E-mail two poems to shayanc@sas.upenn.edu. The Tallgrass Literary Review[/b] is a new journal out of Oklahoma, and they want submissions. The deadline is September 30. "Works about rural life, family life, poverty and religion will receive preference." The "best three" submissions will also win their contest (you're entered automatically when you submit, it looks like), which comes with cash. Not current (as of this week) but still fresh: Nothing right now. asylum years fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Sep 3, 2013 |
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Oct 15, 2012 23:33
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Magazines and journals (both online and in print) want your work. They're also great to read for anyone who wants to keep in touch with what less bigtime authors are doing to make their names known. Unfortunately, they're also a terribly niche thing that a lot of people don't have any experience with. I didn't realize that I really enjoy reading these until I started working with one, and I wonder if that wouldn't also be the case for a lot of other people. Of course, there are a lot of terrible journals in addition to great ones, so perhaps we can help illuminate some solid ones. Goon-endorsed journals: McSweeney's - Note: The highly regarded print edition is a pretty separate thing from the Internet Tendency. Paper Darts Electric Literature - They have a great iPad app, by the way. Barrelhouse Ploughshares - Primarily print; some pieces available online. Slice Magazine - Print only but widely distributed. Narrative Magazine - one of the longest-running online-only publications. Carve Magazine - does short stories only. Print and online. DIAGRAM, "one of the sickest online journals around." - deptstoremook Pulp Modern is a fiction journal that runs genre stories: crime, mystery, horrow, science fiction, fantasy, and westerns. It's printed on demand, and writers have some potential to make a bit of cash. A Public Space Help me fill the list out? There are also a few CC goons who are actually making their own journals, and I'd be game to list those here too, if you guys give me that information. asylum years fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Oct 25, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 23:34
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Thanks so much for putting this together.
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Oct 16, 2012 06:12
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Lawrence Gilchrist posted:Thanks so much for putting this together. No problem. I'm hoping we can encourage each other to send more work out and discuss publications that are actually cool.
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Oct 16, 2012 19:54
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What is "creative nonfiction"? (Mason's Road)
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Oct 18, 2012 23:07
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IfIWereARichMan posted:What is "creative nonfiction"? (Mason's Road) Essays, generally. Think Eula Biss, Lia Purpura, David Sedaris. Anyway, I've just boarded the literary journal bandwagon! This week, I submitted two pieces to about 13 journals (oh god). Thanks to the OP, I added Harpur Palate, Atlas Review, and Ghost Town to my list. Hope someone bites.
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Oct 19, 2012 20:23
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This is excellent, thank you.
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Oct 19, 2012 20:33
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This is really cool, I hope to be able to start perusing this next week after some grad school apps go in. And if I can get a better job, so I can actually pay my writers/artists, I would love to get my literary magazine up and running again. Also would it be possible to separate those with reading fees from those without? Noah fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Oct 20, 2012 |
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Oct 20, 2012 00:25
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Terrific idea for a thread
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Oct 20, 2012 00:35
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Cool post, OP. I've currently got poems out to Cream City Review and fugue, which are university journals, as well as the New Yorker (lol). Cream City Review (out of U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) is doing an issue themed "constraints" which you all may find compelling. I am looking exclusively at academic publications right now (that's where my voice is), but I'd be happy to contribute leads from that world as I stumble across them and remember this thread. One thing I'm curious about is where you all go to read contemporary poetry. Some journals have issues available online, but often it's only selections or nothing at all. I'm staff at a university, do you know of any online databases I could access? A google search for "poetry journal database" predictably brings up only sites like Duotrope. PS - everyone should check out one of the sickest online journals around, DIAGRAM.
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Oct 20, 2012 06:36
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I found this one digging around the AfterImage notice list - if anyone is looking for any other art related submission opportunities it is pretty reputable list and worth checking out (vsw.org/ai/notices). "Mysterious Object, an online arts publication founded in Minneapolis/St. Paul publishes artwork (image, sound, animation, video) and writing (poetry, fiction, essays, interviews). Deadline: Ongoing for quarterly issues. For submission details visit https://www.mysteriousobject.org or email editor@mysteriousobject.org."
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Oct 21, 2012 00:51
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asylum years posted:Harpur Palate, a nationally acclaimed biannual literary journal published by graduate students at Binghamton University, is actively seeking quality fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by established and emerging writers. They will accept submissions for issue 12.2 through November 15th, 2012. This is the litrag of my alma mater, and specifically the college I was in. It's not bad, but it's definitely a lit magazine. Unless they've changed significantly in the past few years, don't expect them to publish anything actually fun to read.
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Oct 22, 2012 02:26
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Oh, cool. I thought nobody was going to bite on this thread.Noah posted:This is really cool, I hope to be able to start perusing this next week after some grad school apps go in. And if I can get a better job, so I can actually pay my writers/artists, I would love to get my literary magazine up and running again. Yeah, you were one of the people I had in mind when I mentioned goons starting journals. You should get on that! Noah posted:Also would it be possible to separate those with reading fees from those without? Here's the deal: contests will have entry/reading fees 99% of the time. Regular submissions to journals will usually not, or it will be negligible (many people are using the Submittable online submission manager, which recommends a $3 charge.) Some top-tier journals will charge a more substantial reading fee, but this is rare enough for what I'm listing here that I'd rather just start noting it in the OP when it does happen. Martello posted:It's not bad, but it's definitely a lit magazine. Unless they've changed significantly in the past few years, don't expect them to publish anything actually fun to read. Yeah, most of the ones I'm adding are in the same vein. I'm definitely down to put more genre-heavy publications in the listings; I'm just not so familiar myself and need the recommendations. I'm an MFA guy, so the definitely lit stuff is actually what I enjoy. deptstoremook posted:Cool post, OP. I've currently got poems out to Cream City Review and fugue, which are university journals, as well as the New Yorker (lol). I had something in to fugue a bit ago. That one's pretty cool. It took them ages to reject me, though. quote:One thing I'm curious about is where you all go to read contemporary poetry. Some journals have issues available online, but often it's only selections or nothing at all. I'm staff at a university, do you know of any online databases I could access? A google search for "poetry journal database" predictably brings up only sites like Duotrope. I don't really know any databases, but Newpages.com and Thereviewreview.net do reviews that might be helpful. I read Slope and Failbetter sometimes, too, which also do poetry regularly. deptstoremook posted:PS - everyone should check out one of the sickest online journals around, DIAGRAM. I'm just going to add these things to the OP whenever they come up. asylum years fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Oct 25, 2012 |
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Oct 23, 2012 01:24
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asylum years posted:Yeah, most of the ones I'm adding are in the same vein. I'm definitely down to put more genre-heavy publications in the listings; I'm just not so familiar myself and need the recommendations. I'm an MFA guy, so the definitely lit stuff is actually what I enjoy. Now that I'm thinking about it I'm actually gonna work something up to submit to Harpur Palate. I should be ashamed of myself for never sending anything in to my own school's magazine. For genre stuff, Duotrope.com is a great place to find publications that fit what you're writing, or really any kind of fiction pubs, not just genre fiction. Pulp Modern is a modern pulp (duh) print publication that I found through Duotrope. It's pretty new, and I actually just got a story accepted for publication there. I believe it will be in the upcoming issue 4. It will be my first publication, so I'm pretty stoked.
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Oct 23, 2012 01:38
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asylum years, nice idea starting this. You're super ambitious to keep updating the OP. You should go for it, but there is so much out there I'd suggest posting some other general resources for publishing goons. I know someone already mentioned Duotrope but it's worth adding that they send out a weekly email with calls for submission, which you can further personalize according to genre interests. They organize by paying and non-paying markets, fee-based and open calls. Winning Writers does a similar monthly email for contests, in which they rate the quality of the sponsor and publish former winners. It's slightly poetry-centric. I also second the recommendation for NewPages. Also if you want to add A Public Space to your list, they're badass. I lived a couple blocks away from them in BK. Martello, congrats on your publication. Let us know when it's up. dream owl fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Oct 23, 2012 |
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Oct 23, 2012 20:37
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The James White Award is closing in a couple of months, which I'm trying my hand at. Not a huge purse, but a nice idea for an award.
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Oct 23, 2012 20:48
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dream owl posted:asylum years, nice idea starting this. You're super ambitious to keep updating the OP. You should go for it, but there is so much out there I'd suggest posting some other general resources for publishing goons. Good idea, thanks. And yes, of course there's much I'm going to miss, but I get a number of these lists e-mailed to me weekly, so it's mostly copy/paste anyhow. More importantly, I just hoped to facilitate a discussion about this side of the lit world that seems underrepresented in CC. dream owl posted:Also if you want to add A Public Space to your list, they're badass. I lived a couple blocks away from them in BK. I don't know why I don't read them more. They've got one of the more stylish online presentations, I think. What's the hard copy like? I've never seen a print issue.
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Oct 25, 2012 00:24
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deptstoremook posted:One thing I'm curious about is where you all go to read contemporary poetry. Some journals have issues available online, but often it's only selections or nothing at all. I'm staff at a university, do you know of any online databases I could access? A google search for "poetry journal database" predictably brings up only sites like Duotrope. I like to read Verse Daily and use it as a way of finding poets & journals I'm interested in. JSTOR is your best bet in terms of academic databases, but many lit journals don't archive their issues in databases. You might have better luck reading books published the major presses (Graywolf, Pitt, Copper Canyon, Wave, Fence etc), finding which journals those poets are publishing in, and triangulating the work you like. If you have access to a university library, you have access to interlibrary loan, and you can use it to get small press books, journal issues, and individual articles/poems. I've been able to chase down some really obscure stuff with ILL.
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Oct 29, 2012 20:13
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asylum years posted:I don't know why I don't read them more. They've got one of the more stylish online presentations, I think. What's the hard copy like? I've never seen a print issue. Hard copy is real nice, stylish like the online but satisfyingly small and thick, simliar to Granta.
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Oct 30, 2012 03:02
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vtlock posted:I like to read Verse Daily and use it as a way of finding poets & journals I'm interested in. Another way, if you have no experience at all and just want to check out some of the bigger ones, is to read where award winners are publishing. The annual Best American Poetry collection will list the places those poems were published, for instance, so that's a dozen right there that are usually fine starting points. Same with Pushcart Prizes and the like.
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Nov 5, 2012 00:17
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Personally, for better or worse, all my writing is currently centred around short stories and attempting to get them published, in journals whose reputation is solely determined by Duotrope. (Fascinating how quickly a single website can quickly become the principal authority in a small section of human society.) I'm also, at the same time, approaching a point where I'm thinking short stories are masturbatory - at least among young/struggling/unimportant writers. This specifically occurred to me as I received an issue in the mail of a magazine a story of mine had been published in, enthusiastically admired my own story in print, and then didn't read any of the dozen other short stories in the issue. I'm a reader as well as a writer, and my reading list has quite a backlog, and I'm just not really interested in reading something unless it's recommended to me, or by a more high-profile author. This makes me feel like a hypocrite. I'm nonetheless going to keep writing and submitting short stories because they're easier to finish, easier to publish and easier to get sweet, sweet validation for. (I had my first paid sale today as well, even if it was for a humble 2 quid.) I'm just writing this out of curiosity to see if anyone else feels the same way.
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Nov 5, 2012 13:24
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Have you guys seen this Twitter Fiction Festival stuff before? This seems like a pretty decent way to kill some time for writers who are into those collaborative writing and super-short-fiction threads. I guess it's not new, but I didn't hear about it last year.freebooter posted:This makes me feel like a hypocrite. I'm nonetheless going to keep writing and submitting short stories because they're easier to finish, easier to publish and easier to get sweet, sweet validation for. (I had my first paid sale today as well, even if it was for a humble 2 quid.) I'm just writing this out of curiosity to see if anyone else feels the same way. Congrats! Are you going to tell us where/if we can find it? In regards to your question, I guess I really don't feel that way myself, but I can understand it. I have several pet journals, and I get into reading everything in those because by now I trust their editorial judgment and typically find some things I like from people I'd never otherwise hear of. That's a very small number of publications, though, and I skip around in magazines I don't already love.
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Nov 14, 2012 01:26
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asylum years posted:Congrats! Are you going to tell us where/if we can find it? Haha, well, I guess as long as somebody's reading them. If only we'd been born in the days when short fiction appeared in Playboy and broadsheet newspapers. My paid sale was an SF flash fiction piece called "Cottesloe Beach," which should now be appearing in The Waterhouse Review in January. I've had three previous non-paying stories published, two of them in venues which are only in print thanks to places like lulu.com. I'd be curious to see where others stand. I think this obsession I've developed with journal publishing recently is partly due to worrying about getting older, and comparing my age to where I think I should be sitting at the moment with my writing. I always figured most authors don't publish a novel until their 30s, but then it occurred to me they were probably publishing short stories for a long while before that. For the record, I turned 24 last month, and I guess I've been submitting to magazines for the past two years, at a glacial pace. I'm not the most prolific writer.
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Nov 15, 2012 14:04
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One of my pieces just got accepted to Mason's Road! Phew! I think it'll be coming out in December. This is my first ever acceptance, so I'm really psyched.freebooter posted:I'd be curious to see where others stand. I think this obsession I've developed with journal publishing recently is partly due to worrying about getting older, and comparing my age to where I think I should be sitting at the moment with my writing. I always figured most authors don't publish a novel until their 30s, but then it occurred to me they were probably publishing short stories for a long while before that. For the record, I turned 24 last month, and I guess I've been submitting to magazines for the past two years, at a glacial pace. I'm not the most prolific writer. I'm in the same boat, for sure. I'd like to finish a book-length manuscript by the time I graduate from my MFA program (at age 27), so I'm scrambling to get shorter work published so I can have some good stuff in my CV. I spent the first three years of my post-college life doing food writing, so a lot of my portfolio is that kind of niche work. Luckily, my program isn't super competitive, so I really only have to deal with the pressure I put on myself.
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Nov 18, 2012 23:02
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Tender Child Loins posted:One of my pieces just got accepted to Mason's Road! Phew! I think it'll be coming out in December. This is my first ever acceptance, so I'm really psyched. Nice, you'll have to let us know when it comes out. I get that magazine at the office, I think (exchange copy), but I don't know that I've ever actually sat down and read it.
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Dec 4, 2012 02:44
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Is it fine to submit to contests and publications at the same time? I know it's pretty standard when submitting to just publications to submit to a whole bunch at a time, but if you have a piece in a contest should you wait on the results of that first before attempting to submit it other places?
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Dec 5, 2012 03:29
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Canadian Surf Club posted:Is it fine to submit to contests and publications at the same time? I know it's pretty standard when submitting to just publications to submit to a whole bunch at a time, but if you have a piece in a contest should you wait on the results of that first before attempting to submit it other places? A lot of people do it, and some contest guidelines even specifically say it's okay. I don't like to do that myself, though. If I'm bothering to enter something in a contest, I don't want to have to pull it out for anything. If it's good enough for the publisher, it's probably good enough to have a shot at winning. Of course, the main thing is always that you need to inform the other party immediately if one accepts.
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Dec 5, 2012 03:53
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Duotrope is going paid only  https://duotrope.com/notes_current.aspx
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Dec 6, 2012 06:41
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Mike Works posted:Duotrope is going paid only That kinda sucks but it makes sense and I don't mind it. They're providing an incredible resource and service that in the past you would have had to pay for. And they're only gonna charge us 5 bones a month for it. That's the cost of one beer, half a pack of cigarettes, a decent sandwich, a really cheap and unsatisfying blowjob, you get the picture. I spend more than that a month on unkind avatars for Something Awful forums posters I don't like.
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Dec 6, 2012 13:57
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Alternatively: just Google more.
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Dec 8, 2012 19:40
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No way is that ever going to be as easy as Duotrope. As well as providing hugely comprehensive listings, half the reason I use it is so that I can keep track of what I've submitted, how long it's been etc. I'm terrible at keeping track of stuff of my own accord and before I opened a Duotrope account I had a few times where I had to send apologetic responses to acceptance emails, saying that I'd already published the story elsewhere (and had plumb forgot that it was already under consideration). 5 bucks a month is good value. Plus they did have very long and persistent donation campaigns, so it's not like they didn't avoid going paid.
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Dec 10, 2012 01:14
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Yeah, fair enough. I don't submit to a million at once, and when I do go on a spree, I just keep track in Evernote or something. I guess I'm cynical about Duotrope in general. While I recognize its utility and think they have every right to charge, I blame sites like it (in part) for some of the basic laziness I see on the part of many writers who submit to journals that shows up in the cover letters I read (not to mention the actual pieces.) I promise I'm not as jaded as I sound right now.
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Dec 14, 2012 04:47
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asylum years posted:I blame sites like it (in part) for some of the basic laziness I see on the part of many writers who submit to journals that shows up in the cover letters I read (not to mention the actual pieces.) I promise I'm not as jaded as I sound right now. Could you elaborate on this? I'm not sure what you mean about it contributing to laziness? Like the writers aren't actually searching out appropriate journals, and are just canvasing?
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Dec 14, 2012 06:09
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Noah posted:Could you elaborate on this? I'm not sure what you mean about it contributing to laziness? Like the writers aren't actually searching out appropriate journals, and are just canvasing? Yes, that's the long and short of it. Here are some of the most common things I see:
Not a big deal, really, but they're all symptomatic of the fact that people don't even bother to read the magazine or even look at the website, then they send us work and it's just obviously not for us from the get-go.
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Dec 14, 2012 06:50
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asylum years posted:Not a big deal, really, but they're all symptomatic of the fact that people don't even bother to read the magazine or even look at the website, then they send us work and it's just obviously not for us from the get-go. I don't know if you can blame Duotrope for this, though. It's definitely something I feel guilty about, as a writer - I think I might have mentioned it earlier in the thread. I've been published in about five magazines/journals now, including paid ones, but I never read them myself. And it's not because I don't read short stories, because I do - it's just that I read short stories in critically acclaimed collections, the New Yorker, etc. I have neither the time nor the inclination to read stuff at the bottom of the pecking order. Yet I expect other people to read my own stories. You know what I mean? I think that's what will probably, eventually, lead me to stop writing short stories and start working on novels.
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Dec 15, 2012 04:17
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Some advice from someone who was on the staff of her university's lit mag: 1) Enter the contests! Especially for the smaller magazines that have fairly limited readership but still have decent payouts for winners. For whatever reason, the quality of work submitted for contests was way below what we got for normal submissions. (I have a feeling that good writers tend to be overly self-critical and underestimate how good their work is, thus not thinking that they're capable of winning anything, while bad ones tend to overestimate theirs.) We guaranteed publication for whoever won our contest, but there were some years where the stories we got for regular submission were better than our actual contest winner, and the contest winner wouldn't have gotten published through regular submission processes (plus they got $1000 and the regular submissions got nothing). Obviously these contests usually cost a little money to enter, so you don't want to go entering a bunch of them willy-nilly, but if you've got something good, try it out at least occasionally. 2) Don't bother to spend time on your cover letter. Half of us didn't even read them and I don't think we were ever swayed by what they said. "Dear [editor's name], Enclosed is my short story ______ for your consideration. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, [your name]" is really all you need--and in most cases, it's preferable. (Throw in something about "My writing has also appeared in _____ and _____ if you've been published before.) Some places will advise you to throw in some biographical information after that, but you really don't need to, and lots of people get way too cutesy and it makes them look amateur. (I literally got one once where the writer informed me she was a Sagittarius.) Obviously if they ask for other information, give them that too, but if they don't, then the above is really all you need.
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Dec 15, 2012 09:09
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freebooter posted:I don't know if you can blame Duotrope for this, though. Yeah, if you want to blame something for simultaneous submissions, blame the Internet. But also blame editorial staff that take 6 months+ to reject a submission. And freebooter, don't discount small lit journals!! I don't know where you are publishing, but I think the fiction in places like Barrelhouse or Willow Springs or Epoch is much more compelling than what I see in the New Yorker. Sure, it's all subjective, but I find that work in some of the top tier places is just far too safe.
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Dec 15, 2012 18:23
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Nice tips, aslan.vtlock posted:Yeah, if you want to blame something for simultaneous submissions, blame the Internet. But also blame editorial staff that take 6 months+ to reject a submission. Yeah, don't get me wrong, I submit simultaneously too, and I don't think it's a bad thing. One big reason it takes people 6+ months to reject submissions, however, is because there are thousands, and a huge chunk of them were never, ever going to actually be in the running because the submitter didn't take 2 minutes to read the submission guidelines. It's a waste of the writers' time (and often money), too. I'm just suggesting that people don't do it totally blindly. quote:And freebooter, don't discount small lit journals!! I don't know where you are publishing, but I think the fiction in places like Barrelhouse or Willow Springs or Epoch is much more compelling than what I see in the New Yorker. Sure, it's all subjective, but I find that work in some of the top tier places is just far too safe. That's a good point. We have a fairly small reader base, but our writers have also been published in The New Yorker, the Best American series, the Pushcart Anthology, etc. Sometimes really amazing stuff appears in these smaller journals, and lots of times established, brilliant writers try out some of their less safe stuff in smaller publications. tl;dr: I support being more surgical than normal about submissions. In my experience, submitting to half as many journals that you've done your homework on will result in more publications than canvassing a huge spread blindly. p.s. updates to the list tonight or tomorrow; there are new contests afoot.
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Dec 16, 2012 20:45
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asylum years posted:One big reason it takes people 6+ months to reject submissions, however, is because there are thousands, and a huge chunk of them were never, ever going to actually be in the running because the submitter didn't take 2 minutes to read the submission guidelines. Aren't you justified in immediately binning those ones? Also, a question for people who work in lit journals - how much of the stuff you receive is absolute zero chance never-get-published crap? Because the only way I can justify submitting to magazines with acceptance rates around 1 or 2% is to hope that a decent proportion of those other submitters are people who really have no business writing fiction.
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Dec 17, 2012 08:53
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freebooter posted:Aren't you justified in immediately binning those ones? I think we probably are, but we don't. We read every last manuscript front to back, no matter how bad it is. Then, for better or worse, we require readers and editors to write a pretty substantive response to it. It's a way of keeping ourselves (and our readers, who we can't always vouch for all the time) accountable. Especially if someone's going to pay us three bucks to read it (I am against submission fees of any kind, but I don't decide that), I find that a pretty easy pill to swallow. It just seems like a lot of wasted effort going around, though. freebooter posted:Also, a question for people who work in lit journals - how much of the stuff you receive is absolute zero chance never-get-published crap? Because the only way I can justify submitting to magazines with acceptance rates around 1 or 2% is to hope that a decent proportion of those other submitters are people who really have no business writing fiction. For mine, stuff that's not right for us, maybe 20%. Then stuff that's just terrible no matter where it goes, another 10-20%. I'll bet the more well known the journal (and the more mainstream appeal it has), the higher that percentage rises. The larger majority is competent but uncompelling. It's not necessarily bad -- it's just not something to get excited about. When you're only taking a handful of pieces, you have no reason to take anything that doesn't excite you. Then there's great stuff that just isn't right for that issue, for whatever reason. (For us, it's often because it's too similar in some way to something else we've already accepted for that issue.) p.s. for this issue, I got some poems in from an actress popular in the 80s who I used to fantasize about when I was a kid. They were poo poo.
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Dec 18, 2012 08:25
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