Journal internships
Journal internships at small literary journals pay little in cash: most offer 0 dollars, a 300 to 500 dollar stipend, or 6 to 10 credits for university coursework, and the real compensation is a portfolio of bylines, an archive to study, and the people who edit it. A literary journal internship is a short, unpaid or low-paid role in which a student helps a small print or online periodical run its issues, from reading submissions to checking proofs. The review under this section, A River & Sound Review, is itself the small journal the page describes: 16 issues since 2019, a 3-editor masthead, and a 100 percent volunteer office, which is why its internship page is honest about money instead of vague about it.
A River & Sound Review publishes 2 to 4 internships a year through Literary magazine hiring notices on its site and through 2 partner universities. The work is the same as any editor's: a rotating 15 hour weekly load, split between reading The independent literary journal, end to end (intake, selection, editing, layout and proofs), and writing 1 short dispatch about the issue in process. It is not a writing fellowship and it is not a marketing gig; the two are listed separately because the pay and the skills are different.
What a literary journal is, in working terms
Definition, and where it sits in the field
A literary journal is a periodical that publishes short fiction, poetry, essays and creative nonfiction rather than news, and in the United States it sits between trade magazines and scholarly presses, closer to a book than to a newspaper. The journal in literature is the same object seen from the inside: a bounded collection of works, issued on a schedule, with an editor accountable for the selection. A literary magazine is the same vehicle at a smaller scale, usually 24 to 48 pages, and the two terms are used interchangeably by submitters. A River & Sound Review publishes fiction, poetry, essays and 1 interview per issue, in 64 page print runs of 300 copies, which is the size band where the term stops being decorative and becomes a description of the actual labor.
Examples of the form are the ones every student has seen on a syllabus: The Paris Review, Granta, Ploughshares and The New Yorker, which is a magazine that also runs a literary section and therefore blurs the boundary. Each of those publishes 4 to 12 issues a year, sells or donates 20,000 to 400,000 copies, and employs a full-time staff, which is exactly what a small journal does not do.
Rankings, databases and the question of prestige
There is no single authoritative list, and that absence is itself the ranking: Poets & Writers keeps the most widely used database of 2,000 plus literary journals, 1000 of them open to submissions year round, while Duotrope, Submittable and The O. Henry Prize directory each filter the same pool by size, fees or contest history. A literary journal database is any of these four, and a student can cross them in 1 evening to build a target list of 40 to 60 journals that match their length and genre. Prestige in this field is reputation, not rank: Plimpton, the 6 foot 3 short story editor, is remembered because the story he placed in a small quarterly in 1969 became a novel, not because a list certified him. George Plimpton edited The Paris Review for 41 years, from 1974 to 2015, and the phrase "the prestigious journal edited by Plimpton" refers to that post, which is the real source of every "literary journal edited by George Plimpton" search.
Outside the American orbit the same object exists under local names: Bangadarshan is a Bengali literary journal that has run since 1939 and prints fiction, essays and criticism in Bengali, and literary geographies is a journal in the geographies of literature subfield that maps where stories are set and read. The point of naming them is that the category is global even when a student's target list is not, and that a database entry without a language field is a trap.
The roles an intern actually fills
Editor, assistant, reader, writer
The literary journal editor is the person whose name is on the masthead, and at a small journal that is 1 to 3 people, not a department. An intern sits under that editor and usually rotates through 3 of the 4 standing roles: reading submissions, editing accepted pieces, checking proofs, and writing 1 note per issue about the process. The literary journal essay that an intern contributes is the visible byproduct of the reading work, and a 900 word essay on how an issue was cut is the single most useful credential the role produces, because it proves the intern understood the selection rather than just the typing.
The reader role is where the hours go. A small journal receives 300 to 1,500 submissions per reading period; an intern who clears 200 a week at a 90 second per-piece skim has done the first pass that lets the editor spend 1 full day on the shortlist. The literary journal editor's job is then to read the shortlist of 30 to 60 pieces closely and pick 12 to 18. That split, 1 machine-pass layer and 1 close-reading layer, is the entire editorial engine of a journal that pays 0 dollars.
What the work is not
- It is not a writing fellowship; the byline is a bonus, not the job
- It is not marketing; social posts are 2 a week and 20 minutes each
- It is not customer service; submitters are answered by a 3 line auto-reply
- It is not unpaid labor for a book deal; the journal's output is the journal
Contests sit next to the editorial calendar and an intern helps run them, because a literary journal contest is the journal's second revenue stream after 0. A River & Sound Review runs 2 annual contests, a 25 dollar fee, a 3,000 word cap, and a 500 dollar first prize; the intern sorts the 200 to 400 entries, flags the 20 that pass a 10 minute close read, and hands those to the editor. The literary journal covers that a contest produces, 1 per winner, are printed at a 4 cent per-page cost, so the fee, not a grant, pays the prize.
Submissions, guidelines and format
What a submission is and what it costs
A literary journal submission is 1 to 5 pieces sent as a PDF or through a portal, and the cost to send is 0 to 5 dollars. Submission fees exist to cut the volume, not to fund the journal: a 3 dollar fee removes roughly 10 to 20 percent of submitters, which is the difference between 1,500 and 1,200 pieces per period. A River & Sound Review charges 0 dollars and caps entries at 3 pieces, 4,000 words of fiction, 20 lines of poetry or 1,500 words of nonfiction per submission, which is the format band that most small journals share. Submission guidelines are the 1 page that states the cap, the fee, the format, the response time and the 1 sentence on what is wanted; a journal whose guidelines do not state a response time is a journal that will not give one, and the databases above list the response time when a journal publishes it.
The literary journal submission format is the file convention, and the universal one is a single PDF, 12 point serif, 1 inch margins, contact details on page 1 and nothing in the header. Granta asks for a 150 word synopsis attached to fiction over 5,000 words, which is the only large journal that still requires a synopsis, and the Voice and the smaller titles that imitate it follow the same 150 word rule. Literature journal articles, in the scholarly sense, are a different object from literary journal pieces: a peer-reviewed article runs 6,000 to 9,000 words and cites its sources, while a journal of literature publishes neither. The definition of literature as the body of written works is the umbrella, and the journal is the shelf inside it where the new work lands before it is collected into books.
A submission is answered, at a journal that answers, in 3 to 6 months, and the literary journal editor writes the rejection in 1 sentence, which is the one piece of writing on this page that the intern does not do. The literary critique that appears in a journal such as the one run out of Khalsa College, Patiala, is a review of a published book, and the genre sits in the same slot in any small journal's table of contents: 1 piece per issue, 900 to 1,200 words, and it is the piece an intern is most likely to be asked to draft, because a review can be checked against the book while a story cannot be checked at all.
Finding an internship and applying
Where the 2 to 4 openings a year are posted
The openings are posted in 3 places, and the student should check all 3: the journal's own site, which lists 2 to 4 internships a year with a 300 to 500 dollar stipend or a 6 credit university option; the university's English department bulletin, where the 6 credit version is advertised as a 15 hour weekly field placement for 1 semester; and the Poets & Writers database, which indexes 1,000 journals and flags the ones that state they take interns. A student who searches only the third will find 20 large journals that no longer run internships and will miss the 30 small ones that do, because the small ones post for 3 weeks and the database refreshes quarterly.
The application, and what it gets back
- Send 1 piece, 4,000 words max, that shows the writing the journal would print
- Send a 200 word note saying what the intern will do on day 1
- Send 2 references, 1 academic and 1 editorial, with full contact details
The application is judged in 2 rounds, 200 to 400 applicants to 6 slots, and the response is a 1 page decision in 4 to 6 weeks, the same response band as a submission, because the editor reads the application the way a reader reads a story: once, fast, then again if it survives. The internship itself runs 12 weeks at 15 hours a week, 180 hours total, and the 2 things the intern keeps are the 1 byline and the 30 names of editors who now know their work. The money, 0 to 500 dollars, is the price of the queue, and the queue is the point.