Our Best Lit Mags of 2025 Voting has CLOSED
- We had 8,160 people participate.
- 2,282 lit mags were nominated.
- 13,884 votes were cast.
Wow!
Winners will be announced next week. Thank you for everyone who participated. You’re all amazing.
It’s back 😏
Nominate Your Favorite Lit Mags of 2025 through this form ⬇️
chillsubs.com/best-lit-mag-a…
Let’s love on some editors, folks. They freakin’ deserve it!
Wowwweee over 3000 of you have already have joined First Draft November 🥲
Our free 30-day challenge where we write 50,000 words of our first drafts, side by side.
We have so many festivities planned friends. Come join? (Link in bio)
#writing#writingcommunity#writers
ALT this is YOUR sign to write a novel
First Draft November
It’s the spooky-ooky season and we’ve got a treat for you 👀 Bloodletter Magazine is extending their submission deadline by a week! (Because we all know that writers are soooo good at hitting deadlines…)
chillsubs.com/lists/freak-sh…#writing#writingcommunity#litmags
ALT Lit Mags That Want Your Freak Shit
Bloodletter Magazine x Chill Subs
Graphic is a white, stylized illustration of a skeleton on a black background with the Bloodletter Magazine Logo on the left side. The Bloodletter Magazine logo is the word Bloodletter on a stencil of a wax seal.
ALT 14 Lit mags with excellent reputations
*Competitive
*Popular
• AGNI #Jolting the inner eye
• Baltimore Review #Space for expression
• Brevity #Spotlighting the brief essay form
• Gulf Coast #Community-oriented excellence
• The Cincinnati Review #Championing diversity and growth
• Granta #Narrative, visceral, and high-stakes
• Georgia Review #Honoring differences
• Kenyon Review #Lyric risk and emotional presence
• The Malahat Review #Top-tier writing with a Canadian focus
• Island Magazine #Sharp, artful, and grounded
• The Missouri Review #Current and curated
• Black Warrior Review #A beacon for adventurous writing
• The Threepenny Review #Radical accuracy and genuineness
• SmokeLong Quarterly #Eclectic and challenging work
I'm writing/developing an essay/class on writing synopsises for @chillsubs' forever class, so what questions do you have about this document, or what elements should I cover?
ALT 9 places to send your writing about girlhood, grief, or god
On girlhood...
• Dreamworldgirl Zine #Whimsical, creative, and nostalgic
• phoebe #Soulful and human
• Milk Candy Review #Beautifully weird, lyrical flash fiction
On grief...
• Thimble #Armor found in the oddest of places
• Bellevue Literary Review #In illness and in health
• Bennington Review #Innovative, intelligent, and moving
On faith...
• Image Journal #Art, faith, and the human experience
• EcoTheo Collective #Ecology, spirituality, and culture
• Pensive #Work that deepens the inward life
Are you:
- Applying to MFA programs?
- Curious about how an MFA can support your goals?
- Baffled by what to include in an MFA application?
Join U of Alabama MFA in Creative Writing faculty members John Estes and Brooke Champagne on Oct 30 for an AMA!
luma.com/pq8khn3q
ALT Poster graphic for a virtual AMA event.
Title reads, "The MFA Life (star symbol) From applications, finding community & beyond"
There is also a white RSVP button, and a few variously aligned texts that read "Chill Subs Live" and "with John Estes and Brooke Champagne"
The right hand side shows two photos of people: John Estes, who has deep-set eyes, short brown hair, and some greying facial hair, is wearing a black button-up shirt and standing in front of a well-lit tree and white picket fence while smiling softly. Brooke Champagne, who has long brown hair, is wearing a light orange shirt under a navy blue jacket and orange earrings. She is standing against a blurred grey background and has a radiant smile.
Join our Discord!
Writing is often a solo project, but that doesn’t mean writers have to be on their own. So we made a place for the Chill Subs community to, well, chill.
Read about it here: chillsubs.com/blog/join-our-…
Okay, but don’t actually give up, because we have Raging Against the State of the Publishing World at 9am tomorrow. Maybe we could do brunch after?
#writingcommunity#writingmemes
ALT Submitters' Bingo
(below is listed in a 3x3 grid)
Got excited but it was the confirmation email
5th form rejection from the same place
Bookmarked 100 mags, submitted to 0
Found a typo 10 mins after submitting
Free "I give up" square
The editor has a personal vendetta against me
Pile of unread lit mags building up
Exported packet in the wrong format
Way too many unused notes app bits
I've rewritten this caption 5x.
If you can relate, you'll love these places as much as we do.
Find the list here: chillsubs.com/lists/_beautif…
ALT Lit mags for beautiful overthinkers
• The Sun #The splendor and heartache of being human
• Gastropoda #Celebrating the spiralic nature of life
• X-R-A-Y #Uncomfortable, entertaining, and unforgettable prose
• Press Pause Press #Your space, far away from the noise
• 3:AM Magazine #Whatever it is, they're against it!
• Gasher Press #Fresh voices and innovative forms
• petrichor mag #Dedicated to the fusion of text and image
• OVER/EXPOSED Lit #Modern and enigmatic work
• ONLY POEMS #Poetry is just the evidence of life
• Tension Literary #Writing with an edge
• Cabinet Magazine #Curiosity about the world
• The Lemonwood Quarterly #Holding up half the sky
• Clarity Magazine #Mental health, minus the fluff
October 15, 2025
Will you get an agent? Who knows. Will you sound important at parties? Absolutely.
No database exists for agents’ reading habits, so we did this the hard way—by asking every agent, editor, and writing-adjacent human we could.
Submit here: chillsubs.com/lists/15_ficti…
ALT 15 fiction magazines that will make agents notice you
• One Story #One great short story at a time
• Passages North #Brave, risk-taking work
• Conjunctions #Groundbreaking experimentation and rigorous quality
• Clarkesworld #Top-tier speculative fiction since 2006
• Fairy Tale Review #Bringing fabulism into the foreground
• Joyland #Where writers can tell the stories that matter to them most
• Ecotone #Writing and art that reimagine place
• F(r)iction #Boundary-pushing literature in themed anthologies
• n 1#A history of the present day
• American Short Fiction #Urgent, resh stories that shake you awake
• McSweeney's Internet Tendency #Challenging conventional expectations
• Ploughshares Literary Journal #Championing community, new writers, and diverse voices
• Cricket #Beloved children's literary publication
• Chicago Review #A contemporary standard of good writing
• Harper's #Fine writing and original thought since 1850
Introducing the Chill Subs Affiliate Program: get paid for doing what you're already doing—spreading the word.
Read all about it here: chillsubs.com/blog/introduci…
Our new 💡Smart Search💡 is about to make finding magazines way faster, and here's how:
- See magazines instantly (with their open/closed status in the dropdown)
- Apply filters as tags to narrow down listings by genre, country, keywords, and more!
chillsubs.com/blog/chill-sub…
ALT The image is a screenshot of the Chill Subs website's new Smart Search browse set against a pastel pink-orange background. The page is on the Magazines tab of the website.
The letters "poe" are typed into the search bar, and the dropdown below shows these items, each with its own thumbnail (usually the cover of the lit mag):
Poetry
Genre
Poem-a-Day
Literary Magazine
Closes on Nov 15
Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry
Literary Magazine
Closed
Poems for Tomorrow
Literary Magazine
Open
Poesy
Literary Magazine
Closed
(End list. Note: the open/closed status and date is right-aligned, unlike the rest of the info.)
Under the filters button, which is located to the left of the search bar, there is a oblong bubble labeled Canada with a small x on the right to delete. This is the new tag filter function, and the search in the screenshot is filtering to view Canadian magazines.
It’s always hard to start up a new lit mag and get momentum, but we think these folks have cracked the code 💥💪 Here’s 10 amazing places to submit if you want to support publications that are coming into the spotlight!
chillsubs.com/lists/new-lit-…
ALT New lit mags blowing up right now and they want your writing!
• Strange Pilgrims #Real, surreal & brutally beautiful
• Seedlings #Roots in the old world and branches in the new
• RUNT Magazine #Proudly elevating the small and scrappy
• Heavy Traffic Magazine #Unbounded, instinctual writing
• Vellichor Literary #Raw, indie, and DIY expression
• Trash Cat Lit #Treasure in unexpected places
• Bread and Butter Magazine #Simplicity and the core of the human experience
• The CryptoNaturalist #David Attenborough meets The X Files
• The Bloomin' Onion #All stories come from somewhere
• wildscape. literary journal #Whimsical, chaotic, gentle, and everything in-between
ALT A small, dirty My Melody plushie is laying haphazardly on asphalt. On the right side, the end of a car can be seen, implying that the stuffed animal has been run over.
The text on the image reads,
"fucking 50 rejections in bro
i can't take this shit anymore"