Best Literary Magazines in 2025

Print & Online magazine for Fiction,

We are excited by writing that is difficult to classify—whether specifically speculative, substantially surreal, or slightly strange. We’re interested in realist pieces that verge on the dreamlike or surreal; speculative stories that are almost realist; and, on top of that, any form of literary fantasy/science fiction/speculative fiction.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Short 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 magazine for Fiction, Poetry,

Founded in 1892 by the teacher and critic William Peterfield Trent, the Sewanee Review is America's oldest continuously published literary quarterly. SR has a long tradition of cultivating emerging talent: we published excerpts of Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O'Connor's first novels, and the early poetry of Robert Penn Warren, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and Christian Wiman.

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Print & Online magazine for Art, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Short 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 & Online magazine for Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry,

Our mission is to publish a magazine of the highest quality for general readers worldwide. As we reflect on our past and look ahead to the future, the goal is to inspire new ways of connecting with the world. Simply put, we think writing should be as comprehensive and far-reaching as twenty-first–century life itself.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

American Chordata is a biannual magazine of bright voices in fiction, nonfiction essay, and poetry, as well as art and photography. We are founded on the belief that a good literary magazine can celebrate sophisticated design and earnest expression on the same page.

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Online magazine for Art, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Short Fiction,

Invisible City is an online publication of the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco that publishes in the fall and spring. We seek work that encourages us to see the world from new perspectives and different angles, ones that we may not have previously considered or imagined.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Scripts,

In 1997, Francis Ford Coppola launched Zoetrope: All-Story, a quarterly magazine devoted to the best new short fiction and one-act plays.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-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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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

The New Yorker is a weekly magazine offering a signature mix of reporting and commentary on politics, international affairs, popular culture and the arts, science and technology, and business, along with fiction, poetry, humor, and cartoons. If your story makes it onto the pages of the New Yorker, you've made it.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

We publish a wide range of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, translations, photography, and work in emerging forms by both established and emerging writers. Work from our pages has been consistently selected to appear in the anthologies Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

Pleiades is a literary biannual featuring poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews by authors from around the world. Past contributors include winners of the Nobel, Ruth Lilly, Pulitzer, Bollingen, Prix de la Libert̩, and Neustadt Prizes, recipients of Guggenheim, Whiting, National Book Critics Circle and National Book Awards, and many writers seeing their work in print for the first time.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction, Translations,

Copper Nickel, the national literary journal housed at the University of Colorado Denver, was founded by poet Jake Adam York in 2002. Work published in Copper Nickel has appeared in the Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and has been listed as notable in the Best American Essays anthology.

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Print & Online magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

Black Warrior Review is the oldest continuously-run literary journal produced by graduate students in the United States. BWR publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and art twice a year.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

The first issue of the Orion Nature Quarterly was published in June 1982, and in its editorial George Russell, the publication's first Editor-in-Chief, boldly stated Orion's values: It is Orion's fundamental conviction that humans are morally responsible for the world in which we live, and that the individual comes to sense this responsibility as he or she develops a personal bond with nature.

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