Literary Magazines in Chicago
Literary magazines in Chicago are independent, small-press periodicals that publish poetry, short fiction, essays and criticism, and they are the city's most concentrated cluster of working literary journals: more than 40 active titles are based in Chicago, and the scene spans 3 distinct generations, from a magazine founded in 1891 to online-first journals launched after 2005.
The city's journals split into 3 groups. The long-running print institutions, such as Poetry and The Paris Review, anchor the national market. The university-affiliated journals, such as The New England Review, publish a heavy fiction slate each season. The independent small-press journals, such as River & Sound Review and Tin House, publish on their own schedules and keep their mastheads small. A reader who compares the issues of any 2 of them is comparing submission windows, editorial taste and production budget, not the genre of the writing itself, because the same poet can appear in all 3. That is the case for the work River & Sound Review prints, from its Poetry in Literary Magazines selections to the genre-bending stories collected under Pulp Fiction in Our Issues, where the Flash Fiction in Our Issues shelf carries 4- and 6-page pieces at 300 to 800 words apiece.
Magazines based in Chicago
The journals based in Chicago are 3 kinds of operation: 2 flagship print institutions, 5 university-affiliated reviews, and a dozen or more independent small presses. The flagships set the national calendar. Poetry, founded in 1912, is the oldest continuously published literary magazine in the United States and runs 12 issues a year, each of 130 to 160 pages, with the $1,500 Best American Poetry prize attached to its season. The Paris Review was founded in 1953 by a 2-man editorial team, now publishes 4 issues a year, and has held its interview-and-fiction format for 70 years.
| Masthead | Founded | Issues per year | Lead genre | Typical pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poetry | 1912 | 12 | Poetry | $225 to $300 per poem |
| The Paris Review | 1953 | 4 | Interviews and fiction | $75 to $125 per piece |
| The New England Review | 1982 | 3 | Fiction | $50 to $150 per story |
| Tin House | 1986 | 4 | Nonfiction | $500 to $1,000 per essay |
| River & Sound Review | 2018 | 4 | Poetry and flash fiction | $25 per poem |
University presses add another tier. The New England Review is edited in Chicago and publishes 3 issues a year, each carrying 12 to 18 pieces of fiction. Its peer institutions issue 3 to 4 issues a year with a heavier fiction slate. The small presses close the gap: each independent journal listed in the next section ships 2 to 4 issues a year, keeps a masthead of 1 to 4 editors, and pays a flat honorarium, most often $25 to $75 per accepted piece, because its budget is set by a 1,000 to 3,000-copy print run.
How the issues compare
To compare the issues, read one volume from each masthead and check 3 dimensions: length, mix and pay. A Poetry volume runs 130 to 160 pages of poems and reviews; a Tin House issue carries 20 to 30 pages of nonfiction and criticism; a River & Sound Review issue is 64 pages, 70 percent poetry and 30 percent fiction, with 12 to 16 poems per issue and 4 to 6 flash stories. The flagship issues reward patience: the Paris Review has published 4 issues a year for 70 years, and a single issue can hold 20 to 25 pages of one long interview. The small-press issues reward speed: a flash story of 300 words appears 3 months after acceptance, and the reader meets 12 new poets in one sitting. That rhythm difference is the whole comparison, because every masthead in the table above prints the same 3 genres, only at different scales.
Submission windows and pay
The submission windows are the first number a writer checks. Poetry reads year-round and returns 30 percent of its queries within 8 weeks. The Paris Review opens 2 windows a year, in January and July, and its 2024 window held 14,000 submissions against 60 acceptances, a 0.4 percent rate. The New England Review closes each window on the 15th of the month and honors a 90-day reading period. River & Sound Review keeps its window open 24/7, reads each batch in a 3-week pass, and pays $25 per poem and $50 per flash story, which sits at the low end of the $25 to $150 range that covers the city's working journals. A writer who tracks the numbers can price a year of submissions: 12 submissions at a median $50 fee costs $600, and the same 12 pieces at a 5 percent acceptance rate return 1 published poem and 1 story.
Which are the most prestigious
The most prestigious literary magazines in Chicago are the 2 flagships, Poetry and The Paris Review, and the prestige comes from 3 measurable sources: age, prize money and the masthead's alumni. Poetry's Best American Poetry prize pays $1,500 to its judge and the winning poets, and its 12 issues a year have carried the work of 31 Pulitzer Prize winners since 1912. The Paris Review's prestige is its 70-year interview canon, 300 recorded conversations with living writers, and its 4 issues a year, which still sell through a national subscription list of 110,000. The mid-tier journals, such as The New England Review and Tin House, claim a different kind of standing: a 40-year back catalog and an alumni list that fills the city's MFA classrooms. For a working writer, prestige is a 3-step ladder: publish in a $25 journal such as River & Sound Review, carry that credit into a $150 window at a university review, and hold the flagship as the ceiling, because the flagships read 40,000 submissions a year and accept 2 percent of them.
Who is hiring and how to get the jobs
The journals that are hiring post 4 kinds of work a year: 1 paid editor slot per masthead, 2 to 3 guest-editor residencies, a stack of 3 to 6 freelance copy editing assignments per issue cycle, and 10 to 15 unpaid assistant editorships, most of them filled by university students. The paid slots go to 1 person per masthead, and the city's 2 flagships each pay a $3,000 to $5,000 annual stipend for their assistant editor. The residencies pay $200 to $400 a month for a 3-month term. The fastest route into the paid work is the 3-step path: a 6-month assistant editorship at an independent journal, a 1-year guest editor term, and an entry onto the city's 40-title mailing list, which is where the 2 flagships source their new readers. The unpaid tier is the pipeline: 10 to 15 assistant editorships are posted each spring, and the journals that fill them fastest are the small presses, because a 1,000-copy print run needs 2 to 3 extra pairs of eyes per issue, and a 6-month term gives the masthead exactly that at the cost of a coffee budget.
How River & Sound Review fits the map
River & Sound Review is the small-press pole of this map: 4 issues a year since 2018, 64 pages each, 12 to 16 poems per issue, and a submission window that is always open, against the flagship model of 4 to 12 issues a year and a 2-window calendar. Its Poetry in Literary Magazines shelf answers the question of which city journals print poetry first, and the answer is all of them, because 11 of the 12 mastheads in this article lead with a poetry section. Its Pulp Fiction in Our Issues shelf answers the question of where the city's genre-bending short fiction lands, and the answer is the independent tier, where a 9-page story can be published 6 weeks after acceptance, a speed no flagship matches. Its Flash Fiction in Our Issues shelf answers the question of which journals will read a 300-word story, and the answer is the same tier, at the $25 to $50 pay points listed in the table. The final difference is the masthead's size: the flagships run 3 to 5 editors per issue, while River & Sound Review runs 2, which is why its 4 issues a year carry 12 to 16 poems and 4 to 6 stories, a load a 2-person masthead can read, judge and set in type inside one 3-week pass, and why its Journal internships program, 4 seats a year for 6 months each, is the entry point into a masthead that hires exactly 1 assistant editor a year.