440: How (and Why) to Submit to Literary Mags and Small Presses

Let me start with this: if you have any interest at all in literary magazines or small presses, you want this book: How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses. It’s a wonderful book and a great guide, and will lead you into this world and help you feel good about your journey without your getting lost in the universe of scattered information that’s available online. We’ve included a ton of links to that scattered universe below, but I encourage you to buy the book, which will ground you in your own journey.

I loved doing this interview, which felt like a return to my own roots in magazine work. As Dennis puts it in the book, there is something about doing the work of shorter pieces and pushing your own boundaries that can be remarkably helpful whether or not you’re also engaged in long form book, and there’s nothing I love more than a roadmap and a checklist. Start, please, by reading and exploring in this world, and then we hope to hear about you contributing. Send links, always!

You know, that’s a thing we should do. I’m creating a chat for links and success stories. By the time you see this, it will have been rolling for a while, but go check it out and add yours HERE.

And follow Dennis! 

Write What You Want
A newsletter about tuning into the most lively possibilities for our writing—and then finding a home for that writing. Includes submission resources, writing advice, prompts, and interviews.
By Dennis James Sweeney
Links from the pod

Heavy Feather Review’s Where to Submit list

AM/PM, Amelia Gray

Underworld, Don Delillo

Making a Literary Life, Carolyn See

HTML Giant

Kathleen Rooney

Laird Hunt

Essay Press

Autumn House Press

Clifford Garstang’s Literary Magazine Rankings

Margot Atwell’s piece in LitHub about the big five thinking of small press as farm Team

Dorothy, a publishing project

#AmReading

Dennis: God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer by Joseph Earl Thomas

Index for Continuance podcast

Material Witness, Aditi Machado

Runaways: A Writer's Dilemma, Michael J. Seidlinger

KJ: Margo's Got Money Troubles, Rufi Thorpe

Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor