Best Literary Magazines in 2026

Print & Online magazine for Fiction, Poetry,

Able Muse predominantly publishes metrical poetry and poetry translation complemented by art and photography, fiction and non-fiction including essays, book reviews and interviews with a focus on metrical and formal poetry. We are looking for well-crafted poems of any length or subject that employ skillful and imaginative use of meter and rhyme, executed in a contemporary idiom, that reads as naturally as your free verse poems.

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Online magazine for Art, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry,

Illuminations of the Fantastic is a monthly online magazine that encompasses works of Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, Adventure, Mystery, Poetry, History, Travelogue, Essay, and Review.

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Online magazine for Art, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Scripts, Short Fiction,

Shorts is a free online magazine launched in February 2020 with the aim of bringing together writers and creative artists from all over the world. Shorts particularly encourages submissions from marginalised communities, and from new and emerging writers. Shorts was established in a time of growing isolationism on the part of the UK and the US, and aims to combat this by uniting global creatives and nurturing unheard voices. It is an LGBTQ+ friendly platform with a liberal outlook.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

One of the oldest quarterlies in the nation, Cimarron Review publishes work by writers at all stages of their careers, including Pulitzer prize winners, writers appearing in the Best American Series and the Pushcart anthologies, and winners of national book contests. Since 1967, Cimarron has showcased poetry, fiction, and nonfiction with a wide-ranging aesthetic.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

There are vanishingly few magazines left in this country which seem pitched at the general literary reader and which consistently publish such interesting, high-quality criticism, reflection, argument, fiction, and poetry. Threepenny is thankfully still out there.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

The Denver Quarterly is a well-regarded, avant-garde literary journal based at the University of Denver. Founded in 1966 by novelist John Edward Williams.

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Online magazine for Art, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry,

Outlander is a digital zine and online platform that celebrates the awkward, the eccentric, and the weirdly beautiful. While its website is always open for submission, it also releases four themed issues throughout the year. Outlander is additionally home to THE LAB, an interview platform that amplifies the voices of upcoming creators.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

Let the power of your imagination be your guide. We're interested in stories, essays, and poems that speak to this idea of Transcendence.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry,

Each issue of Ecotone brings together the literary and scientific, the personal and biological, the urban and rural. Much of the writing we publish addresses the idea of place: overlapping habitats both real and aesthetic.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

The first issue of the Orion Nature Quarterly was published in June 1982, and in its editorial George Russell, the publication's first Editor-in-Chief, boldly stated Orion's values: It is Orion's fundamental conviction that humans are morally responsible for the world in which we live, and that the individual comes to sense this responsibility as he or she develops a personal bond with nature.

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Online magazine for Non-Fiction, Poetry, Short Fiction, Translations,

Sky Island Journal is an independent, international, free-access literary journal. We publish accomplished, well-established authors—side by side—with fresh, emerging voices. Our mission is to provide our over 100,000 readers in 145 countries with a powerful, focused, advertising-free literary experience that transports them: one that challenges them intellectually and moves them emotionally.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry,

Ploughshares has published quality literature since 1971. Best known for our award-winning Ploughshares literary journal, we also publish Ploughshares Solos (digital-first long stories and essays) and a lively literary blog. Since 1989, we have been based at Emerson College in downtown Boston.

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Online magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

TriQuarterly is the literary magazine of Northwestern University and of the MA/MFA in Creative Writing program.

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Print magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction,

Founded in 1972 and “known for publishing important new writers early in their careers” (PEN), AGNI discovers stories, poems, and essays that map our pressured interiority and respond in necessary ways to the bedeviled state of the world. Six contributors have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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Print & Online magazine for Fiction, Poetry, Non-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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