Submission Sunday REDUX: How to Find Places to Submit
The best places to learn about calls and contests beyond this newsletter
Happy Sunday, writers! I thought it would be a good idea to reshare a couple of our foundational posts this month, especially for newer subscribers. Next up: How to Find Places to Submit.
When I started Submission Sunday ten years ago, I was responding to questions from students and clients about how to navigate the wide and woolly world of literary journals and magazines. I had been submitting and doing research for some time, and while it seemed manageable to me, I knew many people didn’t have the same time or interest. I decided on eight as a good number of opportunities to curate per week and Submission Sunday was born.
However, if you are a writer who wants to know more about how to find places to submit on your own, I’m happy to share my knowledge. Below you’ll find an overview of some of the aggregating sites and resources I endorse to start your search.
I first learned about literary journals in the back of anthologies in the Best American series. Back in the day, before online submissions, the journals would list their addresses in the appendix for aspiring writers to submit their work. (Aren’t you so glad we don’t have to mail submissions in 2024? And am I super old?)
The list of addresses has been replaced by the Notables list of essays or stories that were considered for the latest Best American volume but were not chosen, which is even more helpful for us. It’s tricky to just look at the name of a journal and an address and decide whether it’s worth investigating, but if you know an essay or story the journal published was considered by the Best American series, it’s more of a safe bet.
The Best American series also helps us think about tiers. When you start sending out your work, you’re going to want to think about which publications are in your personal top tier (which may or may not be the publications in a more objective top tier). The essays or stories that make it into the Best American series are usually in this objective top tier: The New Yorker, Granta, One Story, The Sun, Agni, McSweeney’s, Harper’s, Ploughshares, etc. The Notables list provides a glimpse at a more diverse list of legitimate publications to add to your wishlist.
Clifford Garstang’s Annual Literary Magazine Rankings
In my estimation, Clifford Garstang is some kind of literary citizen superhero. Every year—for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—he employs a complex formula he has developed that uses Pushcart Prize nominations to rank literary magazines for each genre. To this day, I can’t say I fully understand how this formula works, but the lists he creates are incredibly helpful. As he writes:
Tiering is an aid to simultaneous submissions that groups the best magazines together in the top tier, somewhat less prestigious magazines in the next tier, and so on. It is advisable to submit work to the top tier first, or at any rate within the same tier, so that an acceptance by one, which requires withdrawal from the others, won’t be painful. (If you get an acceptance from a bottom-tier magazine while you’re still waiting to hear from a top-tier magazine, that could lead to a difficult withdrawal. Withdrawal is ethically required, but what if the top-tier magazine was about to accept the piece?) So, I decided to rank literary magazines—first in fiction, because that’s what I was writing, but I later added poetry and nonfiction rankings because many people requested that—to help me decide where to submit. In theory, I would aim toward the top of the list and work my way down until someone finally accepted my work.
As far as I can tell, Garstang does this work for no reward and I, for one, am grateful.
Erika Krouse’s Ranking of 500-ish Literary Magazines for Short Fiction
Erika Krouse has followed in Garstang’s footsteps on a smaller scale by focusing solely on literary magazines for short fiction. (She also references John Fox’s ranking of the 100 best literary magazines from 2021 and The O. Henry Prize Collection Series, which could be used in a similar way to the Best American series.)
Krouse’s formula is based on score (calculated according to prizes won), circulation, money (whether the magazines pay), and “coolness.” She breaks her ranking down into literal tiers, such as “Elite litmags with HIGHER circulation: career changers, circulation above 5K, prizewinning, good payment” and “Very respected: small circulation, prizewinning, sometimes payment” with a total of eight tiers.
If you were interested in a specific publication, you could see where it falls in Garstang’s and Krouse’s rankings and get a pretty good idea what you’re dealing with.
Duotrope is the OG literary submission aggregate site. It costs money to be a member—after a free trial, Duotrope charges as much as a Substack subscription: $5 per month or $50 a year. It is a searchable database chock full of information submitted by members and publications, from acceptance percentages to how long on average a journal takes to respond. You can also keep track of your submissions there. It’s a lot, which is great, but it’s also A LOT without any kind of assistive ranking system, which is why other resources have proven preferable to some writers.
As it says on their webpage, “NewPages.com is news, information, and guides to literary magazines, independent publishers, creative writing programs, alternative periodicals, indie bookstores, writing contests, and more.” If you want to marinate in some literary goodness, you could do worse than spend an hour or two at Newpages. For our purposes here, you want to go their Classifieds section. Listed under Calls/Contests in the menu, you can peruse the latest lit mags and journals to purchase an ad at the site. You’ll need to be discerning, but each ad has a decent description and you’ll find some good opportunities for the writing that might not be destined for a top tier publication.
I mentioned The Review Review in an earlier post, and it offers something unique from the other suggestions here, although it hasn’t been truly active since 2020. Similar to a book review site, The Review Review published reviews of literary magazines and journals, usually focused on a specific issue. It temporarily closed at some point, but its archives were rescued by Scholarly Communication Librarian Shayna Pekala at Gonzaga University.
So, say you read about a litmag that sounds interesting at Newpages. You could then go search the archives of The Review Review and see if the venue has been reviewed there or if the editor has been interviewed. You might read something like this review of Deep Wild Journal:
In the foreword, editor Rick Kempa boasts the journal’s drawing on experiences from various backcountry settings. Although the reflections in the journal are vastly unique, backpacking and hiking are by far the dominant experiences relayed, particularly in the non-fiction pieces. Some of this repetition may be due to the infancy of the journal, and at this point it is probably drawing submissions from a smaller audience. As the journal grows, editions would benefit from more diverse narratives, such as “Ascension,” a fictional piece that chronicles a couple’s anniversary ski trip.
Poets & Writers Grants & Awards
Last but not least, I’d like to point you toward the Grants & Awards section of the Poets & Writers site. If you’re in it to win it, you can find a slew of opportunities that pay in this database with filter options like genre, deadline, entry fee, etc. Sometimes you’ll find a contest with a prize of $1000 (a common award amount), but sometimes you’ll find the Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction Grants with a $40,000 payday if you’ve got a book under contract. Ka-ching.
Finally, the next time you’re in Submittable, check out Discover in the main menu. Similar to Duotrope, the offerings are not curated, but you can scroll through a long list of calls, arranged by submission deadline, and find something that sounds good to you.
☆ I wouldn’t blame you if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed now, but not to worry—we’ll be back next Sunday with eight new literary submission opportunities, varying in audience and genre, that have been selected and vetted for quality and relevance just for you. If you have any favorite sites you use when looking to send out work, feel free to add them in the comments. ☆
Thank you❤. I didn't even know Submittable has a 'discover' page😅
Thank you! This list is extremely helpful!