Creative Writing Guide

Alligator Juniper features contemporary poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and black & white photography. We encourage submissions from writers and photographers at all levels, emerging, early-career, and established.

The American Poetry Review was founded in 1972 in Philadelphia. Bimonthly issues of original poetry, literary criticism, interviews, essays and social commentary.

Apalachee Review is committed to providing a platform for emerging and established writers alike, with the goal of presenting the best in contemporary writing and promoting a vibrant literary culture. Because the Apalachee Review is a literary journal based in the panhandle of Florida, the work of writers from the region will always hold a special place in each issue. However, we also value and welcome submissions from writers all over the country and the world. Our goal is to amplify underrepresented voices, foster community, and inspire a deeper engagement with language and storytelling.

Atlanta Review, an international, award-winning poetry journal based in Atlanta, Georgia, has been published biannually since 1994. We publish all kinds of great poetry; we do not subscribe to any particular “school.” We read and admire lyric, narrative, experimental, form, free verse, prose poems, and any other kind of poetry. To get a sense of our journal, read some back issues.

The Bellingham Review is an American literary magazine published by Western Washington University. The magazine was established in 1977 by the poets Knute Skinner and Peter Nicoletta. The Bellingham Review includes fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction.

Blue Mesa Review was founded by Rudolfo Anaya in 1989. Anaya, a Creative Writing instructor at the University of New Mexico at the time, wanted a space for New Mexican and Southwestern writers to publish their work. As a landscape of intersectionality and diversity, the Southwest is the perfect place for beautiful intersectional art to grow, and Anaya charged Blue Mesa Review with tending those roots in our community. Today, we strive to continue to support and publish voices of the Southwest and the world at large, and to foster connections between our academic circle and the rich literary traditions of Albuquerque and New Mexico. Blue Mesa Review is run by graduate students at University of New Mexico’s MFA program and assisted in our work by a faculty advisor and a team of graduate and undergraduate readers. In our thirty-four years and 40+ issues, our contributors have included Jimmy Santiago Baca, Sandra Cisneros, Joy Harjo, Sherwin Bitsui, and countless other exceptional writers. We are grateful to the diverse voices who have brought their identities, cultures, and creativity to an international arena.

Since 1977, a tough little poetry journal called Blue Unicorn has been going its own way. Long based in the U. C. Berkeley environs (now across a bridge in San Rafael), it is in but not exactly of the San Francisco Bay Area poetry scene. Its subscribers and contributors come from 30 states and 6 countries. Blue Unicorn looks for poems that you couldn't possibly confuse with prose. That distinctiveness may come from form--we welcomed rhyme and meter when these tools were all but banished elsewhere. But the kick can come just as well (or also) from original imagery, gleaming sensory description, or the imaginative handling of idea. We like poems that deserve, even demand, repeated reading. We also take translations, always looking for less familiar poets and languages, and the occasional piece of art.

Crazyhorse was founded in 1960 by the poet Tom McGrath. Since that time, it has published esteemed writers such as John Updike, Raymond Carver, Jorie Graham, John Ashbery, Robert Bly, Ha Jin, W.P. Kinsella, Richard Wilbur, James Wright, Carolyn Forché, Charles Simic, Charles Wright, Billy Collins, Galway Kinnell, James Tate, and Franz Wright. In our pages, you’ll find some of the finest writing being published today: Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, Guggenheim fellows, NEA felloship recipients, and authors with awards from the O. Henry Prize, Pushcart Prize, and Best American anthologies. Crazyhorse welcomes submissions of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction/essay from any writer. Submit up to two manuscripts per year between August 1 and May 31. The journal’s mission is to publish the entire spectrum of today’s fiction, essays, and poetry—from the mainstream to the avant-garde, from the established to the undiscovered writer. The editors are especially interested in original writing that engages in the work of honest communication. We always ask “What’s at stake in this writing?” “What’s reckoned with that’s important for other people to read?”

Since the publication of its inaugural issue in 1996, Five Points has become one of this country’s best literary magazines. Published three times a year by the Georgia State University Department of English, each issue features poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews with the most compelling writers working today.

Since its inception in 1947, The Georgia Review has grown steadily to its current position as one of America's premier journals of arts and letters. Writers featured in the Review range from Nobel laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners to the most deserving newer voices--including many who have never published before.

Green Mountains Review, based at Northern Vermont University, is an award-winning literary magazine publishing poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, literary essays, interviews, and book reviews by both well-known writers and promising newcomers. For the past quarter-century GMR has produced issues of international scope with work regularly selected or cited in the Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Fantasy and Pushcart Prize series; The Boston Globe recently cited GMR as one of the top ten literary magazines in New England.

This national journal has been in continuous publication since 1966. It is published annually and edited by Professor Willard Greenwood and a team of student editorial assistants.

Founded in 1947, The Hudson Review is a quarterly magazine of literature and the arts published in New York City.

Indiana Review is a non-profit literary magazine published biannually by the English Department at Indiana University Bloomington. We've been offering "carefully strange" literature since 1976.

With 2009, The Iowa Review enters its 39th year of continuous publication at the University of Iowa.

The Kenyon Review was founded in 1939. This publication has published such internationally known writers as Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, William Empson, Mark Van Doren, Kenneth Burke, and Delmore Schwartz, as well as younger writers: Flannery O'Connor, Robert Lowell, and Peter Taylor, to name a few. It was perhaps the best known and most influential literary magazine in the English-speaking world during the 1940s and '50s.

From the 1700's to the present day, The London Magazine has played a vital role in the literary world. It championed the work of Wordsworth, Lamb, De Quincey and Clare, as well as the ‘Cockney School’ of poets.

Michigan Quarterly Review is an interdisciplinary and international literary journal, combining distinctive voices in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, as well as works in translation.

Mississippi Review was founded by Gordon Weaver in 1972 at the University of Southern Mississippi. Frederick Barthelme took over the editorial reins in 1977 and along with managing editor Rie Fortenberry quickly turned Mississippi Review into a literary journal of national acclaim. Since 1972, we have been publishing award-winning Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Mississippi Review is housed in the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers. We currently publish two issues a year and host an annual contest awarding prizes in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry.

The Missouri Review, founded in 1978, is one of the most highly regarded literary magazines in the United States. For the past four decades we’ve upheld a reputation for finding and publishing the very best writers first. We are based at the University of Missouri and publish four issues each year. Each issue contains approximately five new stories, three new poetry features, and two essays, all selected from unsolicited submissions sent by writers throughout the world.

As the oldest literary magazine in the nation, our selected works reflect the breadth of the American experience, and encompass any voices that are committed to telling rich narratives that challenge the status quo.

Founded in Paris by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton in 1953, The Paris Review began with a simple editorial mission: “Dear reader,” William Styron wrote in a letter in the inaugural issue, “The Paris Review hopes to emphasize creative work—fiction and poetry—not to the exclusion of criticism, but with the aim in mind of merely removing criticism from the dominating place it holds in most literary magazines and putting it pretty much where it belongs, i.e., somewhere near the back of the book.

Ploughshares has published quality literature since 1971 and has been based at Emerson College in downtown Boston since 1989. Ploughshares blends the unique editorial perspectives of two guest-edited issues with two staff-edited issues each year, showcasing a variety of established and emerging writers across each issue.

Published by the Poetry Foundation, this magazine desires to print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written.

Red Rock Review is a biannual print and online publication that features poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction by emerging and established writers. Founded in 1996, Red Rock Review is housed and supported by The College of Southern Nevada. Publication of Red Rock Review is made possible by the School of Arts and Letters, the arts organizations of Nevada, and generosity of the community members of Las Vegas.

We publish fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual media online and in print. We offer a contest in poetry and fiction, The River Styx Prize, annually.
Each print edition of River Styx is constructed around a theme. We try to keep descriptions as open-ended as possible, and we are certainly open to unexpected interpretations. That said, the works most likely to be selected are those that in some way attempt to address the prompt.

The South Carolina Review is reimagining the Southern Literary Magazine, continuing in the spirit of literary innovation found in the works of writers such as O’Connor, Faulkner, Hurston, Welty, Walker, Dickey, and Ellison while expanding our gaze and range to encompass the best of contemporary literature from a variety of perspectives. We attempt to reflect the diverse experience of our readers and contributors by publishing affecting, thought-provoking work from both new and established writers from a wide background.

The third oldest continuously published literary quarterly in America. From its inception, the magazine set out to publish the best works it received neither attempting to please a mass audience nor limited by its region.

The Threepenny Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1980. It is published in Berkeley, California, by founding editor Wendy Lesser. Maintaining a quarterly schedule (March, June, September, December), it offers fiction, memoirs, poetry, essays and criticism.

Xavier Review, a journal of literature and culture, is the oldest American literary journal based at a historically Black university (HBU). It was founded in 1980 by Charles Fort and Thomas Bonner, Jr., and produces two issues a year.