Magazines are the best way to stay up-to-date on new writing and are a vital component of literary culture. The variety in length, content, frequency and focus varies widely between each magazine. For writers and readers, literary magazines provide an essential space to create a community around contemporary literature.
This month we’re celebrating Granta’s 40th anniversary. Each week we’re publishing an article written by the Granta team about literary magazines.
Each magazine has a different vision or idea of the kind of space they want to create. It’s essential that when considering submitting to a magazine that you make an effort to understand whether your work is right for that particular space. Editors are rarely looking for the ‘best’ thing, rather they are looking for the best of ‘their’ thing.
These are some of our favourite magazines from across the Anglosphere. In the UK, the White Review has built a reputation for publishing innovative fiction and poetry, insightful essays and reviews displayed alongside contemporary art all packed together in a beautiful collectible object. Same goes for the annual Irish anthology Winter Papers, curated by Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith. Our friends at the Stinging Fly, now edited by Sally Rooney, constantly surprise us with new writing from around the world, with a focus on Ireland. Also worthy of mention are Five Dials, Ambit and Lighthouse.
For longer-form reportage, investigative journalism and all-encompassing reviews, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books are the journals to read. For narrative-driven memoir, check out Narratively, the Rumpus, Catapult, Guernica and Longreads.
For in-depth commentary and genre-bending fiction, spanning everything from pop culture to robotics to the Trump administration, n+1 and the New Inquiry are good places to get your fix.
NOON annual, edited by Diane Williams, is a unique collection of avant-garde short fiction we look forward to every year. We also love to receive the Lifted Brow, based in Melbourne, Australia, which publishes fiction, non-fiction, art and poetry in an eye-popping print format.
And, you know, there is always the New Yorker and the Paris Review.
Keep an eye on the blog all month for more articles from the Granta team, and don’t miss our podcast chat with deputy ed Ros Porter.