Submitting short stories to journals/magazines

[macandal]

What are the best places to submit one's short stories? I guess the usual suspects would be The New Yorker or The Paris Review (well, at least for me, these were the first literary journals/magazines I read and I wanted to be published there), though, I imagine, they must be very hard to "get in." Here on the west coast we have Zyzzyva which, over the last ten years (since its inception), has gained a good reputation as a place that publishes quality fiction. (Their stories have gotten picked up by the Best American Short Stories books.) Which other literary mags/journals would you think that would look good on a writer's resume?

[Greer]

There are really so many. I know for a fact that some journals appearing on a cover letter will make the editor/reader be a little more patient with the submission. Some of these are (besides the ones you mentioned) Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Missouri Review, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Glimmer Train, TriQuarterly, Georgia Review, Tin House, Agni, and Prairie Schooner. And obviously The Atlantic and Harper's. I'd recommend looking in the Best American and O. Henry's over the past few years and seeing which journals consistently get stories picked.

[Jenny]

Try googling for market lists eg http://www.mamohanraj.com/Writing/litmarket.html

[AprilBoo]

Check out the markets thread in the Mainstream/Contemporary board - there's a link there to a website with a long long list of journals and mags.

I buy anthologies of short fiction, and I always check the table of contents to see what pubs the stories originally appeared in. That's a good way to get an idea of what kind of fiction certain pubs are buying too.

[Greer]

Another thing you can do is look at successful short story collections -- there's usually one or two every year -- and see where those authors published their stories (it's listed at the beginning of the book).

[AdamH]

The Writer's Market books and online site (writersmarket.com) is an invaluable resource. My only set back is that it costs. Sometimes you can pick up a copy at your local library to peruse.

The place I find useful on line is a site called "Places for Writers". It's a Canadian based site but on their "Literary Mags" list (http://www.placesforwriters.com/journals.html) they have a huge listing of mags from all around the world.

[macandal]

I did a little research and this is what I came up with. Over the last ten years, 1995-2004 (inclusive), this is the number of stories each journal/magazine had published in the Best American Short Stories series. Enjoy!

The New Yorker 45
Ploughshares 18
The Atlantic Monthly 13
Harper’s Magazine 10
Story 9
Tin House 6
Esquire 5
The Missouri Review 5
The Antioch Review 4
TriQuarterly 4
Zoetrope 4
Zyzzyva 4
American Short Fiction 3
Granta 3
Ontario Review 3
The Georgia Review 3
The New England Review 3
The Paris Review 3
The Southern Review 3
The Yale Review 3
Agni Review 2
Callaloo 2
Descant 2
Five Points 2
Grand Street 2
Harvard Review 2
Manoa 2
McSweeney’s 2
Michigan Quarterly Review 2
The Iowa Review 2
The Oxford American 2
Virginia Quarterly Review 2
Antaeus 1
Ascent 1
Big Sky Journal 1
Bomb 1
DoubleTake 1
Elle 1
Fish Stories 1
Gentlemen’s Quarterly 1
GQ 1
Gulf Coast 1
Meridian 1
Mid-American Review 1
Mississippi Review 1
New York Stories 1
Notre Dame Review 1
Open City 1
Other Voices 1
Partisan Review 1
Prairie Schooner 1
Press 1
Quarterly West 1
Salmagundi 1
Shenandoah 1
The Chicago Review 1
The Clackamas Literary Review 1
The Connecticut Review 1
The Gettysburg Review 1
The Kenyon Review 1
The Midwesterner 1
The Recorder 1
The Seattle Review 1
The Sun 1

[AprilBoo]

Wow! Thanks for doing the research! :Hail:


That makes me even more depressed that Atlantic Monthly isn't taking fiction in their regular issues any more.