The Top Lit Mags
I asked ChatBallGT some questions over the weekend and got to digging around with having it spit out lists based on current data out there on the internet. This is stuff that would otherwise take me a while to comb through so I thought it would be interesting to share with yall.
One of the first things I asked was what the top literary magazines were to submit work to. I then asked what my odds were of acceptance. It gave me a little rundown of best practices that I think everyone is familiar with at this point:
I then asked it what it used to determine “top” status for the lists it gave me:
Anyway, below are the main lists I had it come up with. I asked for top 50 but the line cutoff kept stopping around 33 or 34 so I dialed them back to just 25.
The Top 25 lit mags that charge submission fees:
Kenyon Review - September 15 - January 15 ($3 submission fee)
American Short Fiction - Year-round ($3 submission fee)
The Threepenny Review - January 1 - June 30, September 1 - December 31 ($4 submission fee)
Electric Literature - Year-round ($3 submission fee)
Gulf Coast - September 1 - March 1 ($3 submission fee)
The Missouri Review - Year-round ($3 submission fee)
The Cincinnati Review - August 15 - December 15 ($5 submission fee)
The Georgia Review - Year-round ($3 submission fee)
Narrative Magazine - Year-round ($25 submission fee)
Pleiades - August 1 - May 1 ($3 submission fee)
Blackbird - September 1 - April 15 ($3 submission fee)
The Gettysburg Review - August 1 - April 15 ($3 submission fee)
Crazyhorse - September 1 - May 31 ($3 submission fee)
The Hopkins Review - September 1 - April 15 ($3 submission fee)
The Greensboro Review - August 15 - March 1 ($3 submission fee)
Sycamore Review - August 1 - March 15 ($3 submission fee)
Black Warrior Review - September 1 - April 1 ($3 submission fee)
Pleiades - August 1 - May 1 ($3 submission fee)
Boulevard - October 1 - May 1 ($3 submission fee)
The Sun - Year-round ($4 submission fee)
The Iowa Review - September 1 - November 30, January 1 - April 30 ($3 submission fee)
New England Review - September 1 - May 31 ($3 submission fee)
AGNI - September 1 - May 31 ($3 submission fee)
Crazyhorse - September 1 - May 31 ($3 submission fee)*
The Paris Review - September 15 - April 15 ($3 submission fee)
*For some reason it kept putting Crazyhorse twice, no matter how many times I had it regenerate the list! It likes you guys!
The Top 25 lit mags that don’t charge submission fees:
The New Yorker - Year-round
The Atlantic - Year-round
Granta - Year-round
McSweeney's Quarterly - Year-round
Slice - March 1 - May 1, September 1 - November 1
Boulevard - October 1 - May 1
One Story - January 15 - May 31, September 1 - November 14
AGNI - September 1 - May 31
Black Warrior Review - September 1 - April 1
The Gettysburg Review - August 1 - May 31
Glimmer Train Stories - Closed to submissions
The Iowa Review - September 1 - November 30, January 1 - April 30
The Paris Review - September 15 - April 15
The Kenyon Review - September 15 - January 15
The Massachusetts Review - September 1 - May 1
New England Review - September 1 - May 31
Ninth Letter - September 1 - April 30
Ploughshares - June 1 - January 15
Shenandoah - August 1 - April 15
The Southern Review - August 1 - December 1, January 15 - April 15
The Sun - Year-round
TriQuarterly - August 1 - November 15, February 1 - April 15
West Branch - August 1 - April 1
ZYZZYVA - Year-round
Copper Nickel - August 15 - April 15
And finally the most fun question, which of these folks pay and how much?
The top 25 literary magazines that pay authors whose work is accepted:
The New Yorker - Pays up to $10 per line for poetry and $1 per word for prose.
The Atlantic - Pays up to $500 for prose and up to $250 for poetry.
Harper's Magazine - Pays up to $1,000 for prose and up to $1,500 for nonfiction articles.
Tin House - Pays $50 per page for prose and $10 per line for poetry.
Virginia Quarterly Review - Pays up to $1,000 for prose and up to $200 for poetry.
Ploughshares - Pays $45 per printed page for prose and $20 per poem.
One Story - Pays $500 and 25 contributors' copies for each published story.
Zoetrope: All-Story - Pays a minimum of $1,000 for short stories and $500 for poems.
The Paris Review - Pays $50 per poem, $20 per page for prose, and $100 for cover art.
Glimmer Train - Pays $700 for first place in their short story contests and $2,000 for first place in their fiction open contests.
The Kenyon Review - Pays $50 per poem and up to $0.08 per word for prose.
The Sun Magazine - Pays up to $2,500 for nonfiction, up to $1,500 for fiction, and up to $200 for poetry.
Boulevard Magazine - Pays $100-$300 for prose and $25-$100 for poetry.
Electric Literature - Pays $100 per piece for nonfiction and $1,000 for winners of their annual literary prizes.
Alaska Quarterly Review - Pays $15 per page for prose and $10 per page for poetry.
American Short Fiction - Pays $25 per page for prose.
The Georgia Review - Pays $50 per poem, $50 per page for prose, and up to $200 for essays.
The Missouri Review - Pays $40 per printed page for prose and $10 per line for poetry.
The Iowa Review - Pays $1.50 per line for poetry and $0.08 per word for prose.
Black Warrior Review - Pays $100 per prose piece and $50 per poem.
AGNI - Pays $10 per printed page for prose and $20 per poem.
The Gettysburg Review - Pays $2 per line for poetry and $0.25 per word for prose.
Ninth Letter - Pays $25 per printed page for prose and $10 per poem.
Gulf Coast - Pays $50 per prose page and $25 per poem.
The Threepenny Review - Pays $400 per story or article, and $200 per poem.
Obviously your mileage may vary on how correct any of this is, as it’s just an example of data that this bot could scrape in a few seconds. No doubt some of the info is outdated because sites don’t update public info that often. Either way it was fun to just have this kinda stuff get pulled up when asked rather than have to sift through each magazines website.