Best Fiction Literary Magazines in 2025

Print magazine for Fiction,

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, founded in 1949, is the award-winning SF magazine which is the original publisher of SF classics like Stephen King's "Dark Tower", Daniel Keyes's "Flowers for Algernon", and Walter M. Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz."

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Print magazine for Fiction,

The Oxford American is a nonprofit, quarterly literary magazine dedicated to featuring the best in Southern writing while documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. Over its quarter century, the Oxford American has won four National Magazine Awards — including an award for General Excellence in 2016.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

Smart, funny, fabulist, poltical prose featuring mostly West Coast writers. The Santa Monica Review currently features literary fiction and nonfiction, though in past years also included poetry. SMR represents Santa Monica College's commitment to the literary arts, community, and literacy.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

The Chicago Quarterly Review is a nonprofit, independent literary journal publishing the finest short stories, poems, translations and essays by both emerging and established writers. We're proud to have had work from our pages chosen for Best American Short Stories and the Pushcart Prize Anthology as we continue our mission to stimulate, entertain, and inspire.

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Online magazine for Fiction,

Lightspeed is a digital science fiction and fantasy magazine. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF—and fantasy: from epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and contemporary urban tales, to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folktales.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

BOMB Magazine has been publishing conversations between artists of all disciplines since 1981. BOMB's founders decided to publish dialogues that reflected the way practitioners spoke about their work among themselves. Annually, BOMB serves 1.5 million online readers through its free and searchable archive and BOMB Daily, a virtual hub where a diverse cohort of artists and writers explore the creative process within a community of their peers and mentors.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

Published three times a year by the Georgia State University Department of English, each issue features poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews with the most compelling writers working today.

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Print & Online magazine for Fiction,

The Dark Sire is an online magazine for short fiction, poetry, and art in the subgenres of Fantasy, Gothic, Horror & Psychological Realism

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Print magazine for 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.

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Print & Online magazine for 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.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

Ploughshares has published quality literature since 1971. Best known for our award-winning Ploughshares literary journal, we also publish Ploughshares Solos (digital-first long stories and essays) and a lively literary blog. Since 1989, we have been based at Emerson College in downtown Boston.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

Bard College's literary journal Conjunctions publishes innovative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by emerging voices and contemporary masters.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

West Branch is a twice-yearly magazine of poetry and fiction, published by Bucknell University.

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Print & Online magazine for Fiction,

Seaside Gothic is a quarterly literary magazine from the edge of the sea where the frontier of civilisation meets the wild of the water.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

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

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