The following is a list of 7 new literary journals. All of these journals have been around for less than six months.
In my experience, there are many reasons to seek publication in these journals. When a literary journal is new, the editors tend to be a lot more passionate. I have gotten handwritten thank you cards from editors of new publications, something that has never happened when my work was published by a more established journal.
Editors of new journals tend to be more generous with their time, energy, and enthusiasm. Plus, they are genuinely grateful that you trusted their new and untested journal with your work. Several of the journals that published my work in their first issue have gone on to permanently feature my poems on their website as their ‘sample poem’, so that other submitters get a feel for the kind of work they like to read.
New journals have recorded podcasts about my work. My work ended up getting promoted a lot more than if it had been accepted by an older, more established journal.
With a new journal, the odds that work will be nominated for a literary prize increase as well. I have been publishing in new journals for eight years and some of the journals that published my work when I was a new writer are now established and several now have a less than 1% acceptance rate. However, when I originally submitted, they were far less competitive.
During that eight-year period, a number of those new journals went under, which is one of the major pitfalls to submitting to new journals. The other major pitfall is that you don’t know what you are getting into, particularly if your work is published in the first issue. You can’t look at past issues, online and in print, because they have none. In a way it is stepping into the unknown. In my experience though, the risk is always worth it because the reward can be much greater
Below is a list of 7 literary journals that I very much like, that have been around for less than a year. The list is in no particular order.
Note: Not all of the journals are currently open to submissions, but most are.
They publish creative flash fiction, poetry, and visual art online. They are able to pay authors a token amount.
This literary journal is focused on publishing fiction and nonfiction about the back country, which they define as “away from paved roads, a day’s journey or more.” It is a print journal.
This isn’t a traditional literary journal, rather it is a collection of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that was published in literary journals that is now defunct and so readers can no longer read your work online. To learn more about submissions go here.
This beautiful new online literary journal is seeking submissions of poems, prose poems, flash fiction, nonfiction and hybrid work.
Halibut is a new online literary journal seeking haiku, senryu, gendai, haibun, haiga, tanka, renku, and related forms, written in English.
They are focused on diverging from the norm in a positive and uplifting way. They are a beautiful online press that publishes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
They are looking for poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction that focuses on the different and strange things people do to make the money to keep the lights on.
Emily Harstone is the pen name of an author whose work has been published internationally by a number of respected journals. She is a professional submissions adviser and spends much of her time researching manuscript publishers. She occasionally teaches a course on manuscript publishing. You can follow her on Facebook here.
