September is the back to school season if you have children or if you are a teacher or student. However for an experienced submitter, September is a very exciting month for different reasons.
Most journals take the summer off. Particularly the prestigious academic journals. That means that for 3-4 long months over half of the respected journals are on break, and most of the journals that are still reading have much slower response times.
Now that fall is here I am going to give brief reviews of three of the most exciting journals that just re-opened to submissions. All three are print journals that pay their poets and accept electronic submissions.
1. The New England Review
The New England Review (also known as NER) publishes a wide variety of fiction as well as poetry. It has published many innovative and famous poets. They accept less than 1% of the work that is submitted to them, and their name means something to all the other journals out their.
NER accepts electronic submissions but it charges a small fee for each submission (2 dollars per poetry submission). However if you want to avoid that fee you can submit your poems through postal mail..
NER publishes four print issues a year. It takes the editors about two months to respond to submitters. If you are interested in submitting work to NER please visit their website here: http://www.nereview.com/
2. Jubilat
Jubilat is a print journal that exclusively publishes poetry. They accept less than 1% of the work that is submitted to them, so they are a challenging market. However they are also respected publishers who have helped establish the reputation of many poets.
Jubilat’s print editions are beautifully bound, however you do not have to purchase one to get a good feel for what they publish. They also post a small sampling of poems online so you can get good a good feel for what they are looking for.
Jubilat responds to most submissions within 2 months, which is a good response time for a journal with a larger editorial board. If you are interested in submitting you can learn more about what they are looking for here: www.jubilat.org.
3. North American Review
The North American Review was founded in 1815. It is one of the oldest and most respected print journals in the country. They are open to fiction as well as poetry, so keep that in mind if you write both.
They are have a very slow response time though. If you submit expect to wait up to a year to hear back from them about your submission. They accept under 5% of the work that is submitted to them. That gives you a much better opportunity to be published than most of the top tier journals.
If you are interested in submitting to them you can learn more at their website here: www.northamericanreview.org.
