ALT Open lit mags that pay writers and don't charge fees Barrelhouse - Bridging the gap between serious art and pop culture midnight & indigo - Literary home for Black women across the diaspora Anarchist Fictions Journal - Print journal of original and reprinted short fiction and poems about, or adjacent to, anarchy Flash Fiction Online - Celebrating brief, beautiful, and dynamic flash fiction beestung - Micro-mag of non-binary writers that's sweet and stings Aôthen Magazine - Ancient Mediterranean themed classics lit mag Pleiades Magazine - Literature in context Fantastic Other - Discussing dreams, analyzing fantasies, prodding popular larks Jun 11, 2026

ALT Where our favorite weirdos are sending their writing Gone Lawn ✦ Shiny things, unusual works, and odd garden animals Apocalypse Confidential ✦ Low lives, high strangeness Brown Hound Press ✦ Offbeat mystery, dark humor, southern gothic, and lit fic Lamp Lit ✦ Just humans bringing a little light to the darkness Black Warrior Review ✦ Experimental fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and art shoegaze literary ✦ Third space for dreamy, distorted alternate realities God's Cruel Joke ✦ Work that pushes through the threshold of possibility Wallstrait ✦ Bold, innovative, and hard-to-define fiction and nonfiction Tiny Spoon ✦ Bite-size experimental literary magazine scaffold ✦ Miniature worlds that are sharp, shimmering, strange, and sanguinary SCAB ✦ A literary and art zine for those who don’t fit in BULLSHIT LIT ✦ For lovers of the inane, the ugly, and the funky Dark Horses ✦ The monthly magazine of weird fiction Disappointed housewife ✦ Stretching genres, breaking rules, bending brains 1/2

ALT 5 Lit mags that will accept (or reject) you by Friday • scaffold literary magazine - Miniature worlds that are sharp, shimmering, skeletal, surreal, strange, and sanguinary • The Dark - Showcasing the best in dark fantasy and horror fiction, with a focus on unique and experimental storytelling • The Disappointed Housewife - Dedicated to showcasing unconventional and innovative works that challenge traditional literary forms • Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine - Stories that are like gooseberry pie: Tart, Messy, and Satisfying, but leave us wanting more • Neologism Poetry Journal - In search of new horizons of poetic language, or at minimum ways to feel something new from old words and poetic forms Our stats-backed lists are based on 250K tracked submissions from our 69K users. Check them out at our link in bio!