Nine Literary Magazines You Should Be Reading
Forget the heavy hitters for a moment. Sure you’d give your left arm to be published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Tin House, Glimmertrain… but there is a bevy of truly fantastic literary magazines that deserve your attention — and your submissions! — so take a look and be prepared to fall in love.
Atticus Review
Atticus Review is a weekly online journal. The issues are themed, but the writing is anything but uniform. Each author published takes a dramatically different approach to featured themes such as Hair, Beginnings, and Swimming. Every issue of The Atticus Review presents a collection of writing that is witty and weird in just the right proportions. The review is affiliated with the independent press Atticus Books. The website also includes interviews with featured poets and fiction writers.
They Publish: The Atticus Review publishes, in its own words: “stories, poems, electric literature, and other genre-busting words of wisdom and interactive whimsy.”
From the Editors: “Atticus Review isn’t so much different or better than other indie lit journals. It requires the same amount of creativity, passion, keen curatorial instinct, and blind faith as any underground humanities movement. What makes it invaluable is the mutual respect and admiration that we as editors and writers gain from our sophisticated readers.” –Dan Cafaro, Publisher
Learn more about Atticus Review here.
Passages North
Passages North is run out of Northern Michigan University. While the print journal comes out annually, the website is frequently updated with “bonus content” that includes stories, interviews, and an extensive series of short “Writers on Writing” essays. Established in 1979, Passages North offers a fresh look at contemporary fiction. It also holds a short story and a short-short prize every other year; it is not too late to enter this year’s contests.
From the Editors: “We’re a journal whose central office is in the basement floor of a building that’ll eventually be demolished due to university progression; this is an office next to a health center where flu patients come without appointments and nineteen year-old girls are afraid they’re pregnant. There’s no sunlight, and the work we print reminds us that this is not the world exclusive.”
— Tim Johnston Managing Editor, PN
They Publish: short fiction (short shorts and longer stories), poetry (spoken-word and written word), creative nonfiction, hybrids
Learn more about Passages North here.
