i admittedly haven't kept up with it in a while but maybe 3AM Magazine might be your speed

I like the European Review of Books, but I'll admit I do love the design of the website and maybe it's tricking me into thinking the writing is better than it is.

Times Literary Supplement

I haven't given up on the Paris Review yet, and I will say the current era is not the best. However, I think it's still worthwhile especially when you get access to their archives.

At this point, literary magazines in the western anglosphere exist for the benefit of the editor-owner and perhaps a few of their friends, not for the reader. I confess, it was once my dream to start a literary magazine too: prestige, cultural cache, absolute power to make editorial demands and forge influential transactional relationships with my captive readership as collateral. And just think, all that without having to do anything other than scrape together enough money to get a cool looking cover printed on high quality matte and mail out 200 copies, claiming in interviews the readership was over 15,000 but also that it is our policy not to pay writers because we want to encourage people who are in it for the art, not the money. Once we've made a splash by lying on the internet, I'd then exclusively publish things by people who can do me favors or else the scribblings of my cronies. The submissions inbox would of course remain forever unchecked, "due to the volume of submissions we receive." I recommend substack, new and even very well known writers are downright eager to give you a representative sample of their work for free to get you in, without any gatekeepers imposing their hidden politics or local clout-oriented filters. The downside of no gatekeepers is that 95% of it is like nails on a chalkboard and pathetically dull, lazy, and a complete waste of time. But that's also true of most literary magazines these days, unless you happen to be a wealthy guilty white liberal with an MFA (or someone who strives to emulate them) who is desperate for stories written by... people with identical backgrounds to you, but maybe some of them are half-korean or they were sexually harassed by woody allen or something.

lowiqmarkfisher

29 days ago

lmfao amazing comment. Dead on. Literary mags exist for the vanity of the editor, not the reader anymore.

1Reply

I did the short trial of the London Review and honestly, I felt a little too tapped out of the scene to really appreciate it. There are some decent articles in it but I'd rather just read actual novels tbh. A friend likes the Paris Review quite a bit and it also is a bit nicer looking haha- the LR is on newsprint. Not printed but you might enjoy this if you want non English stuff: https://theuntranslated.wordpress.com/

London Review of Books is the goat. New Left Review is also pretty good. I am canceling my Jacobin subscription :(

I've been checking out London Review for a while, and I guess it may seem like a lot of opinions because many of the books they review are non-fiction/relating to current events. There are also usually a few articles about art/fiction in each issue and I have enjoyed most of them!

Some favorites in non-English languages: Liwayway (Tagalog: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liwayway , Eureka (Japanese: https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ユリイカ_(雑誌) ), and Harvest (Chinese: https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/收穫_(雜誌) ).

See https://www.lit.salon/threads/green_light/FRLwwtgarZ1lGt42y6dN They're all pretty mainstream though. I wish I could help but, truthfully, I don't read many magazines, only academic journals.

For the record, my favourite literary magazine in Scandinavian is https://vagant.no.