Conjunctions Submissions
A Conjunctions literary magazine submission is a manuscript sent to Conjunctions, the New York City literary journal founded by Ben Lerner in 2011, which reads fiction and poetry year round through an online portal, has no submission fee, and typically replies within 6 months. The magazine publishes 4 issues a year and pays $300 for published fiction, the largest part of its budget going to authors. Because the windows never close, the question for most writers is not whether Conjunctions is open, but what Conjunctions wants in a submission and how the journal compares with the other titles a working writer keeps on a list: Catapult, Diagram, Bombay, Brick, The Journal, Epoch, Grain and craft journals of every kind, plus the poetry houses, Granta and Boulevard, that round out the list. This page sets out the submission mechanics, the standing open windows, and the practical way to compare these magazines as you build your own list of targets.
What Conjunctions reads and when its windows are open
Conjunctions reads fiction and poetry, and its submission windows are always open, which answers the core question of literary magazine submissions open at any given moment: the portal accepts at all hours, and Conjunctions is not one of the magazines that closes on the last day of the month. The journal also runs an annual Call for Submissions campaign, usually announced in January, that asks readers to nominate work by authors who have not yet published in the magazine; the winners are then invited to submit, which is a second route in that does not require a standard query. Conjunctions reads fiction in 3 time periods: contemporary, historical and speculative, and it welcomes short stories as well as novellas and longer serial fiction, so a 9,000 word story is not automatically out of scope. Poetry can be a single poem or a sequence, and the editorial team reads both forms in the same continuous queue.
How a Conjunctions submission is read and what the rules are
A submission to Conjunctions follows a narrow set of rules, and the reading process is the same whether the work arrived in week 1 or week 40 of the year. The portal accepts a single PDF per submission, the cover page names the author, and the body is a single work or a single sequence rather than a batch of 3 unrelated pieces. The journal asks that work not be under simultaneous consideration with a few named partners, and it will not read work that has appeared in a major publication before. Once a file is in the queue, a reading editor decides within 3 months whether to pass it, and the editors then meet to select the fiction and poetry for each of the 4 issues. Rejection letters go out from the same address for every pass, which is why the 6 month wait for a reply is the number to budget for, not a signal that the work is being special handled. The $300 fee for accepted fiction is paid on publication, and the journal takes a single electronic reprint right rather than first print in most cases.
What makes a Conjunctions submission stand out
Three traits do the work in a Conjunctions submission, and each one is something an editor can test in the first pages. First, a voice that sounds like the author and not like the genre. Second, a plot that has a shape, which can be a turn, an image repeated with a change, or a single decision that reframes the story. Third, an ending that is earned rather than explained. A poem that lands any one of the 3 traits moves faster through the queue than one that depends on all 3, and the editorial team has said in interviews that the magazine looks for writers whose work could carry a full issue, which is why the $300 rate exists at all: the journal is buying a book's worth of voice, not a one-off story.
Open windows across the literary magazines on a working list
If the question is simply which literary magazine submissions are open this month, the answer is a list of standing windows, and the table below is the compact version of that answer. The pattern that repeats: a large share of the best journals read year round, a smaller group opens and closes on a fixed schedule, and the rest run short, announced periods that require tracking.
| Magazine | Focus | Window | Fee | Response time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conjunctions | Fiction and poetry | Always open | None | 6 months |
| Catapult | Fiction, nonfiction, poetry | Always open | None | 1 month |
| Diagram | Fiction and nonfiction | Always open | None | 4 months |
| Bombay | International fiction and poetry | Always open | None | 6 months |
| Brick | Fiction and poetry | Always open | None | 3 months |
| The Journal | Fiction and nonfiction | Always open | None | 2 months |
| Epoch | Nonfiction and poetry | Always open | None | 6 months |
| Grain | Poetry, fiction, nonfiction | Rolling | $1 for 3 works | 2 months |
| Granta | Fiction, poetry, nonfiction, essays | 1 month, 2 periods a year | $1 | 3 months |
| Boulevard | Poetry and fiction | Announced periods | $1 | 1 month |
The practical split is this. Conjunctions, Catapult, Diagram, Bombay, Brick, The Journal and Epoch all keep their inboxes open, so a literary magazine accepting submissions at any time is not a rare state; it is the default for the tier a writer submits to most. Granta and Boulevard are the exceptions: Granta Submissions open for 1 month at a time in 2 periods a year, and Boulevard Submissions follow announced periods, so both require a calendar, not just a mailing list. The 1 dollar fee at Granta and Boulevard is a filter for the magazine, not a cost that should discourage a writer; the $1 fee at Grain covers 3 works, which makes it the most economical place on the list to send a longer batch.
Building your list: craft journals, poetry houses and the rest
The last job is to arrange the list into a shape that a writer can work, and the clearest shape is by what the journal buys rather than by its size. Craft literary magazine submissions go to journals whose mission is form: the page, the sentence, the image, and these titles reward work that is technically exact in a way a reader can point to. A black literary magazine submission goes to a journal whose focus is Black writers and Black readership, where the work is judged against a living tradition rather than against a genre. The poetry end of the list is where the money and the timing questions get sharpest: Poetry publishing companies accepting new work in the 2026 season include the 2 periodicals named above, both of which close their windows, and both of which pay on the small side, so a poet with a long queue of work is better served by the always open journals first and the windowed ones as a scheduled add on. And because a journal is only as good as the people in it, Literary magazine hiring at small titles is where a writer learns who is actually reading, since editors at the 10 magazines in the table above are also the agents of the 12 literary agencies that pull from those very pages.
Conjunctions sits at the top of that list for one reason: it is the one title where the window never closes, the fee is 0, the payment is $300, and the queue is read by editors who are also the people building the magazine's 2026 season, so the submission goes to the exact readers the published issue will be made of. The rest of the list exists to catch what Conjunctions does not read, and that is the whole arithmetic of a working submission plan.