Genres a Magazine's Issues Can Carry
Magazine genres are the fields of writing that a periodical prints in its issues, and a literary magazine's issues can carry 3 broad fields: fiction, poetry and nonfiction, with flash fiction and micro fiction as the shorter forms inside the fiction field. River & Sound Review is an independent literary journal that publishes all 3 fields in every issue, and its pages show how each genre fits into the shape of a print magazine. The fields work side by side: fiction supplies the narratives, poetry supplies the compressed verse, and nonfiction supplies essays, memoir, criticism and reportage, so a single issue can move from a 2,000 word story to a 30 line poem to a 1,200 word essay.
The map of those fields splits in two directions at once. Across the fields, the major split is the 3-way split between fiction, poetry and nonfiction, and inside that split, the short forms get their own shelf: flash fiction under 1,000 words, micro fiction under 300 words, and the slush pile that feeds all of them. That is the whole architecture, and the rest of this page walks it in order, from the 3 major fields to the short-form niches, then to the 365-day submission cycle, then to the prestige ladder that runs on the same fields, then to the 2 career tracks the field pays, and finally to where each genre lands in River & Sound Review's own issues, including Poetry in Literary Magazines, Pulp Fiction in Our Issues, Flash Fiction in Our Issues and the open window at Granta Submissions.
The 3 major fields in a literary magazine's issues
The 3 major fields are fiction, poetry and nonfiction, and they divide a magazine's table of contents by length, rhythm and job. Fiction is the narrative field: short stories, novellas, flash fiction and micro fiction, each piece told through scene, character and plot, and each piece carrying the issue's heaviest page count. Poetry is the compressed field: a 30 line poem can hold as much as a 3,000 word story, which is why poetry pages run so dense. Nonfiction is the factual field: personal essays, memoir, literary criticism, book review, reportage and translation, all of which ground the issue in the world outside the page.
| Field | What it holds | Typical length in an issue |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction | Short stories, novellas, flash fiction, micro fiction | 500 to 5,000 words per piece |
| Poetry | Free verse, formal verse, prose poems, translation | 10 to 60 lines per poem |
| Nonfiction | Personal essay, memoir, criticism, book review, reportage | 800 to 2,500 words per piece |
Each field is a genre family in its own right, and the families are what a magazine's issues can carry in the broad sense: every issue of every literary magazine since the first magazines in the 18th century has been built from some combination of these 3 families.
The short-form niches inside the fiction field
The short-form niches inside the fiction field are the fast-moving part of the map, and they matter because a print page is a fixed size and a 5,000 word novella uses up the same page that 5 flash pieces would use. Flash fiction runs under 1,000 words, micro fiction runs under 300 words, and both fit into the white space a long story leaves behind, so editors pair them deliberately. A 200 word micro piece can sit on a page beside a poem and a photograph without crowding either, which is a layout trick a 3,000 word story could never manage. The niche also changes who writes: the flash form admits first-time writers more often than the novella does, because the bar to finish a tight 600 word story is lower than the bar to sustain a 15,000 word one.
The submission cycle and the genres it accepts
The submission cycle and the genres it accepts are the mechanism that fills an issue, and the cycle runs 365 days a year in most independent journals. River & Sound Review runs an open submission window 4 times a year, 3 months long each, and the 4 windows line up with the 4 seasonal issues. A writer submits a short story, a poem or an essay through the journal's reading system, a volunteer reader passes or flags the piece, and the editors choose the issue's table of contents from what passed. The genres the cycle accepts are exactly the 3 major fields plus the short-form niches: fiction, poetry, nonfiction, flash fiction, micro fiction. The cycle is also the only place the map is live, because the fields on this page are only as wide as the genres a journal actually accepts, and an issue's genres are whatever the cycle let through.
The prestige ladder across literary magazines and journals
The prestige ladder across literary magazines and journals sorts the field's most famous names by the weight their acceptance carries, and the same 3 fields rank the journals at every rung. At the top of the ladder, the most prestigious literary magazines are the ones whose acceptance is a career mark: The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, The Atlantic and The New York Review of Books, each publishing fiction, poetry and nonfiction and each running a submission window on a set calendar. Mid-ladder, the best literary magazines for a working writer's first bylines are the open-access independents that read 100 to 300 submissions a month and reply within weeks, such as River & Sound Review, which takes the same 3 fields without paywalls or agent filters. The ladder matters to a writer the same way it matters to a journal: the prestige rung a piece lands on is the signal the field reads, and the genres that carry the signal are the 3 major fields, not the niche. A famous literary magazine is famous for its fiction, its poetry or its nonfiction, and the famous name is attached to the field it does best.
The jobs and hiring tracks the field pays
The jobs and hiring tracks the field pays are the 2 career tracks that sit on top of the same 3 fields: the editorial track and the contributor track. The editorial track pays for reading and shaping, and its jobs are the ones literary magazines hire for, such as assistant editor, poetry editor, fiction editor, nonfiction editor, production editor and managing editor; the field hires most in the seasonal window before an issue closes, and a 200 to 400 word rejection note is the same skill a production editor uses to trim a story. The contributor track pays for writing, and its income is the reading fee: most small journals pay 0 to 100 dollars per accepted piece, the larger magazines pay more for first publication, and a 3,000 word story that sells at 250 dollars is the standard benchmark for a mid-tier literary magazine. Both tracks run on the same fields, because a poetry editor edits poetry, a fiction editor edits fiction, and a nonfiction editor edits nonfiction, so the genre a writer works in is the genre a magazine hires for.
Where each genre lands in River & Sound Review's issues
Where each genre lands in River & Sound Review's issues is the concrete end of the map, and every issue carries all 3 fields in the same 64 page budget. The fiction section opens the issue with 1 short story at 2,000 to 3,500 words, then carries the short-form shelf: 3 to 5 flash fiction pieces under 1,000 words and 2 micro fiction pieces under 300 words, which is where the Flash Fiction in Our Issues shelf lives. The poetry section runs 8 to 12 poems across the issue, which is the Poetry in Literary Magazines shelf, and it mixes free verse, formal verse and 1 translation. The nonfiction section takes 1 personal essay at 1,200 to 2,000 words and 1 book review at 800 words, closing the 3-field loop. Pulp Fiction in Our Issues is the exception the field allows: a 1,000 word pastiche of the pulp paperback, printed once a year in the issue that wants a joke, and it sits in the fiction section because it is fiction wearing a costume. The genres a magazine's issues can carry, then, are these shelves, and River & Sound Review's issues carry all of them, 3 fields, 2 short-form niches, 1 yearly costume, in every 64 page issue.