These are magazines that accept book reviews. Most also accept other genres, like fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Some of them pay writers. Most, but not all, of them are open for submissions now.
Boston Review
They’re currently open for essays and reviews. “Please note that we are a general interest political and literary magazine…. We primarily publish long-form essays, substantial book reviews, and political and social analysis. We do not publish op-eds, and we do not accept unsolicited personal essays.” Poetry and fiction are closed. Details here and here.
(They are also looking for paid full-time and part-time Spring editorial interns; the position is in Cambridge, MA; the deadline to apply is 11th December 2023; see their Submittable for details.
They also run the annual Black Voices in the Public Sphere Fellowship for media professionals, which will reopen for applications in early Spring 2024, and which pays a monthly stipend of $5,000.)
Cleveland Review of Books
They publish reviews, essays, interviews, and excerpts. “While we are especially committed to publishing writing on, about, and from Cleveland and Ohio, as well as the Rust Belt and greater Midwest, regional connection is by no means a requirement. Our conception of what criticism is and can be is purposefully expansive, generous, and open. We publish writers at all stages of their careers, regardless of publication history.” They have detailed guidelines, please read them carefully. Web rates start at $70. Details here.
Bulb Culture Collective
Their social media bio says, “We’re a new online lit space accepting previously published work that has lost its original home.” They publish poetry and prose (reviews, fiction, creative nonfiction, nonfiction, poetry); they want work that was “previously published (regardless of when it was published) by a journal that has since gone dark or if circumstances have made your work unavailable online for any reason. You must retain the rights of this work.” They also accept work that was previously published, regardless of journal status, as long as the work was published in 2021 or before. Details here.
Parabola
Parabola is a quarterly journal that explores the quest for meaning as it is expressed in the world’s myths, symbols, and religious traditions, with particular emphasis on the relationship between this store of wisdom and our modern life. They publish book reviews (500 words), as well as articles and translations, retellings of traditional stories, forum contributions, and poetry. The theme for their next issue, Spring 2024, is ‘Freedom’, and the deadline is 1 December 2023. They pay. Details here.
Split Lip Magazine
“Split Lip Magazine is a voice-driven literary journal with a pop culture twist.” They publish online monthly and in print annually – reviews (800-1,200 words), micro-reviews of short literary works (micro-reviews are 250-500 words), and interviews (for reviews and interviews, query/submission is via webforms, not Submittable – see guidelines), memoir, flash fiction, short stories, and poetry. Pay is $75 for web contributions, $5/page for print, $50 for interviews/reviews, and $25 for mini-reviews for their web issues. Fee-free submissions for all writers will be from beginning to end November, or until filled. “In an effort to promote Black voices, free submissions will be open for Black writers and artists in all genres all year (except when we are closed to all submissions in July and the second half of December).” Details here, here (query/submission form for reviews), and here (query/submission form for micro-reviews).
433
Their website says, “433 is a daily magazine of art, literature and politics that began as a running collection of “moments of silence” from various places around the world, experienced in isolation, in the midst of a pandemic.” They publish nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and art. And, “Notes is our new channel for reviews, interviews and criticism. We will consider any book, film, music, art or other reviews/criticism/interviews, but we will place a special emphasis and are particularly interested in writing that emerges from within the author’s communities. … Criticism here is seen as distinct from creative nonfiction, but we know this is a strange distinction, and if you submit as criticism or CNF, we won’t mind if it feels more like one or the other.” Details here.
Woods Reader
This is a publication for those who love woodland areas – public preserves, forests, tree farms, etc. They want work pertaining to locations within the US and Canada. Writers should query before submitting book reviews. They also publish personal experience, philosophy, personal opinion, fiction, educational articles, humor, poetry, destination pieces, assigned topics, as well as photographs and illustrations. They ideally want work of 500-1,000 words and occasionally accept longer. Pay is $25 to $100. Details here.
Black Fox Literary Magazine
This is a print and online magazine. For their blog posts, they want articles on the craft of writing, personal essays on writing, book reviews, book news, and publishing news. They also accept fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art. There is no fee for submitting blog posts, and those are open on an ongoing basis; the deadline for fee-free submissions in other genres is 30 November 2023. Details here and here.
Poetry
Apart from poems, they also publish reviews of poetry books of 1,200-1,800 words and other poetry-related prose. They want reviews that consider 2 or more new poetry collections, drawing connections between disparate works, focusing on a shared theme/aesthetic/etc. across works by different poets; reviews focused on multiple books by a single author and/or on collected or new and selected works; and reviews of underappreciated/overlooked works from the last year. Pay is $150/page for prose, and $10 per line for poetry ($300 minimum). Details here. (They also run the annual $10,000 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism for full-length published prose work, the deadline for which has passed this year.)
COMP: an interdisciplinary journal
This magazine is affiliated with Piedmont University, and they have published 3 issues so far. “For critical prose, we’d love to feature craft essays, artist manifestos, criticism, reviews, essays on film, music, visual art, poetics or writing praxis/pedagogy, etc.” They also publish fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and cross-genre work. Their submission period is November to February. Please send your work only during the reading period. Details here.
Strange Horizons
This science fiction and fantasy magazine publishes in-depth reviews of speculative art and entertainment, especially books, films, and television. They prefer reviews of 1,500-2,000 words, and pay $60 for reviews of at least 1,000 words. They also accept review pitches. Apart from reviews, they publish speculative fiction, nonfiction, poetry, columns and roundtables, for which rates vary. Details here and here.
The Amazine
Their guidelines say, “we invite you to send us your submissions, in form of think pieces, social and cultural commentaries, all kinds of reviews and recommendations, portraits, prose, poetry, essays, travelogues and almost anything else. If you don’t express yourself with words, no worries, send us your collages, drawings, photos, videos …” Their mission is “Creating a space for joy, curiosity and the bittersweetness of life by keeping wonder alive and kicking.” Details here.
Lincoln Review
This annual magazine is affiliated with the University of Lincoln. They accept queries for book reviews and interviews, and submissions of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, and comics. Details here.
Tor.com
This science fiction and fantasy publisher accepts pitches for essays, think pieces, list posts, reaction pieces, and reviews in the 1,000-2,000 word range for their blog. All original content for blogs is paid. They have occasional calls for novels and novellas on their website. Details here.
West Branch
This literary magazine from Bucknell University publishes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. For reviews, “Book reviews are typically arranged by assignment, and we currently publish only poetry reviews. If you are interested in writing reviews, please query with a sample. Our pay rate for reviews is highly competitive.” Pay for other prose is up to $200 and for poetry, it is $100. Details here.
London Review of Books
This well-regarded magazine accepts unsolicited submissions as well as proposals. “The best guide to what we might like is what we usually publish, including poems, reviews, reportage, memoir, articles for our Short Cuts and Diary slots, and blogposts.” Details here.
Kaleidoscope
They publish work on disability, and accept work from writers with and without disabilities. For reviews their guidelines say, “Reviews that are substantive, timely, powerful works about publications in the field of disability and/or the arts. The writer’s opinion of the work being reviewed should be clear. The review should be literary work in its own right – 5,000 words maximum each/two reviews maximum.” They also publish poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, articles, and visual art. Pay is $10-100. Details here.
Agbowo
They publish work by African origin writers only. They accept reviews of up to 1,500 words; reviews of recently published books are given preference. They also accept fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, and art/photography. Interviews are closed for now. Pay ranges from $25 to $60. There is also an editor’s prize for poetry, $100. Please send only one submission per reading period. The deadline is 30 October 2023. Details here.
The Masters Review
They accept book reviews for their blog, though these are unpaid – “Book Reviews (700-1,200 words) must be of books scheduled for a 2023 release. We recommend submitting your review at least one month before the scheduled publication date.” They also accept fee-free submissions of interviews and craft essays for the blog, fiction for their ‘New Voices’ series, as well as a fast response option for BIPOC voices. They pay for these. Details here.
Carousel
This is a “hybrid literary/arts magazine with a global focus, positioning Canadian talent alongside international contributors.” They are open for #USEReview, their experimental reviews section. “We are especially looking for reviews of hybrid literature, graphic novels or experimental poetry and prose. … There is no set genre for your review. Send us a suite of poems, a comic strip, a short story, a piece of visual art — whatever you like, as long as you feel that your review meaningfully comments upon the text(s) in question. … The text being reviewed does not need to be contemporary, though we will likely prioritize reviews of more recent texts.” Pay is $20-40 for these reviews. They are currently closed to fiction and poetry. Details here.
The Chamber Magazine
They publish dark fiction, poetry, essays, translations, as well as book and movie reviews. For reviews, “The more recently published or distributed the better, but I will consider reviews of classic works of dark fiction all the way back to Walpole (and before if sufficiently interesting). These must be approximately 7,500 words or less also.” Details here.
The Horn Book Magazine
They review children’s and YA books published in the US. “Articles submitted to The Horn Book Magazine should be of a critical nature on some aspect of children’s literature and should be no longer than 1600 words in length. Potential contributors are advised to have a solid familiarity with The Horn Book Magazine before submitting manuscripts. “Cadenza” submissions — witty commentaries, send-ups, poems, sketches, comics, cartoons, etc. — should be approximately 350 words (text) or fit on a 6-by-9-inch page (art).” They do not accept fiction, or work by children. They pay. Details here.
Contingent Magazine
Contingent is a non-profit history magazine. “Our writers are adjuncts, museum workers, independent scholars—all people who work outside the tenure-track professoriate.” They accept pitches of reviews, “of books (especially books by non-tenure-track historians), films, museum exhibits, television shows, really anything reviewable. If there’s a book coming out soon you’d like to review, we can arrange to have an advance reader copy sent to you.” Reviews are roughly 1,000-1,500 words, and the base pay for these is $250. They have other columns and features too, and pay ranges from $50 to $500. Details are in their pitch guide here.
The Ex-Puritan
This magazine publishes reviews of Canadian literature, as well as interviews, nonfiction, fiction, experimental/hybrid work, and poetry from writers around the world. “We publish reviews of CanLit books, especially by marginalized & debut authors. We love reviews of chapbooks; we love reviews both experimental and traditional. We are especially interested in work by LGBTQ2S+ writers, BIPOC writers, and writing from other marginalized folks. Reviews doesn’t require a full draft; a pitch is acceptable as long as it is fully thought out and justified.” Pay is CAD100 per interview or review; CAD200 per essay; CAD150 for fiction; CAD35 per poem (or page, capped at CAD120); CAD50+ per experimental or hybrid work, at an increasing scale depending on the nature of the piece. They read year-round, with cut-off dates for issues. The deadline for their upcoming issue is 25 December 2023; they accept a limited number of fee-free submissions each month (see guidelines). Details here and here.
Archetype
They publish reviews (1,000-5,000 words), essays, poetry, fiction, interviews, impassioned musings, photography, and art. See their section on writing reviews. Also see their writer’s resources, which details the kind of work they are looking for; it also has a section on writing reviews. They have two reading periods, November 1 to January 7 for their spring issue, and from June 1 to August 6 for the fall issue. Please send your work only during the reading periods. Payment is a contributor copy. Details here.
The Columbia Review
This magazine is affiliated with Columbia University. For reviews, they accept outlines/pitches of up to 600 words, as well as complete reviews of up to 1,500 words. They also publish fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translations. The deadline is 15th December 2023. Details here.
Gramarye
Their website says, “The Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction seeks articles, book reviews and creative writing relating to literary and historical approaches to fairy tales, fantasy, Gothic, magic realism, science fiction and speculative fiction for Gramarye, its peer-reviewed journal published by the University of Chichester.” Reviews are approximately 1,000 words. The deadline is 21 March 2024. Details here.
MetaStellar Magazine
Their guidelines say, “We are interested in reviews covering any form of entertainment — books, movies, TV Shows, videogames, and so on — as long as it falls into the science fiction, fantasy or horror genres. We prefer a word count between 500 and 800 words, but also accept longer pieces if you are writing a listicle, such as “Ten Best Fantasy Novels Involving Dogs.”” Reviews, essays, excerpts, and reprints are unpaid and accepted year-round. They pay for flash fiction, which is open till end-October. Details here and here.
Slightly Foxed
Their website says, “Our contributors are established writers, journalists and people from other fields who share their passion for particular books and authors. Since it is entirely independent, Slightly Foxed is free to follow its own bent, to promote unfashionable enthusiasms, to celebrate the offbeat and the unusual. Contributors are encouraged to discuss their chosen books with passion and wit, to air arcane knowledge, to delight in eccentricity and to share the joys of exploring the extraordinary, the little-known and the downright peculiar.” Writers should check their index first to make sure they have not already covered their chosen book. Articles are 1,000-2,000 words. Past contributors include Robert Macfarlane and P. D. James. They also say anything accepted for publication is unlikely to appear immediately. They pay. Details here and here.
Harbor Review
They want reviews of poetry chapbooks, full length books of poetry, poetry and art hybrid books, and art books. “Written reviews should be around 300 words. The book being reviewed should be forthcoming or have been published in the last 6 months. We are particularly interested in reviews of work by women, non-binary folks, people of color, and members of the LGBT community. Send us something different. Make a video. Write something unusual. Incorporate an interview. Interpretive dance? Yes!” They also publish poetry and art. Details here (scroll down).
(They are also open for fee-free submissions from BIPOC writers and previous finalists for their Laureate Prize for poetry manuscripts; the prize is $500 and publication, and the deadline is 31st January 2023, details here.)
Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She can be reached here.
