For those of you who are aspiring creative writers hoping to get your work published one day, there are many ways you can go about getting your writing out there. Whether your passion lies in poetry or personal narratives, you can certainly find a way to showcase your command of the written word by submitting your creative work to various literary magazines and journals.
Without further ado, here are several literary magazines you might consider submitting to (made even better because there are no submission fees and you’ll even get paid if your work is selected):
A nonprofit print magazine based in Brooklyn and founded in 2007, Slice accepts fiction, nonfiction, and poetry submissions. On its website, Slice proclaims, “We’re looking for anyone with a fresh voice and a compelling story to share—basically any work that really knocks our socks off.”
The submission process is simple enough: you submit via Submittable, an online submissions manager, as Slice does not accept submissions by email or snail mail. Submissions have a maximum of 5,000 words. And the great news is that if your work is chosen to be featured in the magazine, you get paid $250 if it’s a story or essay and $75 for poems.
Founded in 1815, North American Review is America’s oldest literary magazine and accepts poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. While open to a diverse range of creative work, this lit magazine also sets the bar high by what it declares on its website: “We are especially interested in work that addresses contemporary North American concerns and issues, particularly with the environment, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and class… We like stories that start quickly and have a strong narrative arc. Poems that are passionate about subject, language, and image are welcome, whether they are traditional or experimental, whether informal or free verse.”
If you think you’re up for the challenge, you may want to try your hand at submitting to North American Review. If you’re a poet, the magazine asks that you submit no more than five poems. Otherwise, plan to submit either one short story, two short-short stories, or one essay, which are usually not more than 30 pages.
This literary magazine accepts fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, with a focus on personal writing as well as pieces that address political and cultural issues. As Sy Safransky, editor and publisher of The Sun, elegantly put it “I’m looking for a writer who doesn’t know where her sentence is leading her; a writer who starts with her obsessions and whose heart is bursting with love; a writer sly enough to give the slip to her secret police, the ones with the power to condemn in the blink of an eye. It’s all right that she doesn’t know what she’s thinking until she writes it, as if the words already exist somewhere and draw her to them. She may not know how she got there, but she knows when she’s arrived.”
With this captivating literary inspiration in mind, there is generally a 7,000 word maximum for pieces. The pay rates are as follows: $300-$2,000 for nonfiction or fiction and $100-$250 for poetry. Submissions both online and by mail are accepted.
Now that you have these wonderful resources, get writing!