Best Fiction Literary Magazines in 2026

Print magazine for Fiction,

The mission of New Letters magazine, its radio companion, New Letters on the Air, and BkMk Press, is to discover, publish and promote the best and most exciting literary writing, wherever it might be found. We publish and serve readers and writers worldwide. In recent years, New Letters has won a National Magazine Award, the industry's highest honor, plus multiple Pushcart Prizes, and is reprinted often in Best American anthologies.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

Nimrod International Journal, founded in 1956 at The University of Tulsa, has been active in the discovery and publication of new writers for more than 60 years. Nimrod has also encouraged and rewarded new writers for more than 30 years through The Nimrod Literary Awards.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

Copper Nickel, the national literary journal housed at the University of Colorado Denver, was founded by poet Jake Adam York in 2002. Work published in Copper Nickel has appeared in the Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and has been listed as notable in the Best American Essays anthology.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

Pleiades is a literary biannual featuring poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews by authors from around the world. Past contributors include winners of the Nobel, Ruth Lilly, Pulitzer, Bollingen, Prix de la Libert̩, and Neustadt Prizes, recipients of Guggenheim, Whiting, National Book Critics Circle and National Book Awards, and many writers seeing their work in print for the first time.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

We publish a wide range of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, translations, photography, and work in emerging forms by both established and emerging writers. Work from our pages has been consistently selected to appear in the anthologies Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.

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Print & Online magazine for Fiction,

For over half a century Shenandoah has been publishing splendid poems, stories, essays and reviews which display passionate understanding, formal accomplishment and serious mischief.

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Print & Online magazine for Fiction,

Flora Fiction is a collective of creative muses and inspiration. From original writing to reviews in music and entertainment, there’s always something to be discovered.

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Online magazine for Fiction,

Invisible City is an online publication of the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco that publishes in the fall and spring. We seek work that encourages us to see the world from new perspectives and different angles, ones that we may not have previously considered or imagined.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

Arguably America's most esteemed journal of humor writing. Submission to be made separately for their web and print editions. Short stories, flash fiction, and personal essays are not something we typically run on the website. Instead, we're in the market for short, conceptual humor. We strongly recommend reading through our archives to get a sense of the style of writing we're after.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

Founded by the poet Tom McGrath in Los Angeles in 1960, Crazyhorse continues to be one of the finest, most influential literary journals published today. We look forward to another 50 years of the publication of McGrath's visionary foray into the world of letters, and hope you'll join us in encountering the best new writing we can publish.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

The Massachusetts Review is one of the nation's leading literary magazines, distinctive in joining the highest level of artistic concern with pressing public issues. As The New York Times observed, "It is amazing that so much significant writing on race and culture appears in one magazine." MR was named one of the top ten literary journals in 2008 by the Boston Globe.

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Print & Online magazine for Fiction,

Witness blends the features of a literary and an issue-oriented magazine to highlight the role of the modern writer as witness to their times.

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Print & Online magazine for Fiction,

Black Warrior Review is the oldest continuously-run literary journal produced by graduate students in the United States. BWR publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and art twice a year.

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Print & Online magazine for Fiction,

Seaside Gothic is a quarterly literary magazine from the edge of the sea where the frontier of civilisation meets the wild of the water.

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Print magazine for Fiction,

Since 1946, Chicago Review has published a range of contemporary poetry, fiction, and criticism.

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