Where to Send Your Writing - AFTER SILHOUETTE!

In case you didn’t know (though given that you’re reading our blog, I doubt it), VT’s Silhouette Literary and Art Magazine is accepting submissions for our spring issue. As you dust off your quills and spill some ink, you might realize that you’re not satisfied with submitting to just one literary magazine, and why should you be? Your writing deserves to be read! So after you’ve submitted to Silhouette (by February 21st, to be precise), you and many others will begin the harrowing marathon that is searching for and submitting to the large number of literary mags out there. Thankfully, there are ways to make this journey easier on you.

Firstly, a lot of literary magazines maintain a social media presence (I’ve run into most of them on Twitter). Once you’ve followed a couple, I’ve noticed that related mags will start following you! The Nonconformist regularly updates their Big, Big List of Literary Magazines and Journals, featuring well over a hundred alphabetized mags that you can start looking up. If you’re looking for a more structured searching experience, though, someone’s got you covered. A friend recommended the website Chill Subs to me a while ago, and I think it’s worth a look. It’s a free database of literary magazines, but what sets it apart is its excellent system of filters. It’s hard to do justice in writing, so I’ll just show you.

Beyond the expected fields, like name and genre, you can also search based on whether they’ll charge you to submit, whether you can submit pieces previously published (like you can at Silhouette!), if you’ll get paid when they accept you, or even just by “Vibe.” They even accept submissions themselves, if you ever find yourself wanting to write about the process of submitting to literary mags.

Once you’ve gotten a couple submissions under your belt, I recommend you start keeping track of it all somehow. For me, I keep a doc with everything I’ve submitted and where, so I don’t accidentally submit something already published to a magazine that requires originals. Eventually, you’ll have a satisfying list of your literary accomplishments! And I, for one, can’t wait to read them all. Happy writing!