Literary Magazines for Teens
Literary magazines for teens are journals that accept submissions from writers under 21, print their poetry, fiction and essays in printed and online issues, and give them a byline that no school publication can match. They are the bridge between a first serious poem written in a notebook and a professional reading: a place where a 15 year old's story sits next to work by published writers, judged by editors who read for craft rather than age. A River & Sound Review, an independent literary journal, is one such publication; it takes work from writers at every stage, from a first submission at 16 to a 70 year old revisiting fiction, and its issues carry poetry, flash fiction, pulp fiction, interviews and reviews. This page lists the journals a young writer can actually submit to, what their issues carry, and the few rules that decide whether a submission gets read.
Three of the categories that decide where a teen writer lands are Poetry in Literary Magazines, Pulp Fiction in Our Issues and Flash Fiction in Our Issues, and all three run in the issues of A River & Sound Review, a publication that is a new, independent project unaffiliated with any earlier brand that once used a similar name. The wider world of these publications sits inside Literary review magazines, a field that also includes small presses, school presses and online open mics, but only the journals below have a standing rule that a writer's age is either an advantage or simply irrelevant.
Where Young Writers Actually Publish
Young writers actually publish in a small, nameable set of magazines, and the list shortens quickly once you drop the ones that take no under 20s at all. The journals below accept teen and young adult work as a standing rule, not as an exception, and each one publishes a real schedule of issues. The common thread is a journal that wants to find writers early, and the practical effect is a magazine where a first story by a 17 year old reader is not a curiosity but a regular entry.
| Magazine | What it wants from young writers | Format and fee |
|---|---|---|
| A River & Sound Review | Poetry, flash fiction and pulp fiction from writers of any age, 16 and up welcomed | Online and print issues, no submission fee |
| Seventeen | Short fiction and creative nonfiction, a long running home for teen pages | Print and digital, no fee |
| Chrysalis | Poetry and prose from teen writers, the flagship of the teen literary scene | Print journal, no fee |
| Breakout | Fiction and nonfiction aimed at young readers | Print and digital, no fee |
| Teen Ink | Work from writers as young as 13, the broadest age band in the field | Print and online, no fee |
| Yellow Barn | Poetry from young people, run by a small volunteer team | Print journal, no fee |
Seventeen is the oldest name in this set; it has been putting teen pages in print since 1955, so a submission accepted there enters a 70 year record of young writing. Chrysalis and Yellow Barn exist because a handful of editors decided that a teen's poem is not a lesser draft of an adult poem, and their print runs say the same thing in physical form. A River & Sound Review adds a different angle: it does not sort submissions by age at all, so a 16 year old's flash fiction is read against a 40 year old's in the same pile, and that is exactly the condition under which a young writer learns fast.
Journals That Take New Writers, and Why New Writers Should Submit
Journals that take new writers share one working habit: the editor reads the piece before the résumé, which is why a first submission has the same chance as a tenth. The magazines a new writer should shortlist are the ones above plus a second ring of open submission journals that print debut work every single issue, and the reason to submit is simple. A new writer needs a byline, and a magazine is the fastest, cheapest way to get one; a school anthology takes a year to assemble, a journal takes a few weeks to read.
- Submit to 3 journals in the first month, not 30, so each piece gets a full read
- Send your strongest 2 poems or 1 story, not a whole folder of everything you have written
- Read the last 2 printed issues of each magazine before you hit send, because the match between your piece and their issues is what an editor sees first
- Track every submission with a date and a 4 week follow up, since most journals answer within 4 weeks and the ones that do not are the ones to set aside
The best literary magazines for new writers are not the famous ones but the responsive ones, and a 12 year wait for a rejection letter teaches a young writer nothing while a 4 week decision from a small journal teaches them how the field moves. The emerging writers who get published first are almost always the ones who submitted 5 times in their first season rather than 1 time and waited a year, and that pattern holds in every issue of A River & Sound Review, where the byline list mixes first timers with writers who have been printing for 15 years.
Emerging Writers and the Debut Slot
Emerging writers and the debut slot are the same conversation viewed from two desks. A journal that reserves a slot for debut work in each issue, and several of the magazines in the table above do exactly that, is a journal that has decided its job is to find writers, not to collect them. For a new writer that slot is the most valuable line in a table of contents, because it is a published statement that an editor chose this piece, by this person, from a stack of strangers. A River & Sound Review marks debut work the same way, and the debut bylines in its issues have gone on to book deals, fellowships and 2nd journals, which is the quiet argument for submitting early while your voice is still forming.
The Best Literary Magazines, Ranked by What Their Issues Carry
The best literary magazines, ranked by what their issues carry, fall into 3 groups, and the grouping matters more to a young reader than the order. The poetry first journals print a majority of poems and a few prose pieces per issue; the story first journals do the reverse; and the mixed journals like A River & Sound Review carry poetry, flash fiction, pulp fiction and reviews in the same 64 page issue, which is a better education for a teen writer because it shows how the forms borrow from each other. A writer who wants to learn structure should read a story first issue; a writer who wants to learn compression should read a poetry first issue; a writer who wants to learn range should read a mixed one, and the mixed kind is where a new writer sees that a 3 line poem and a 2000 word flash story are doing the same job at different scales.
For poetry specifically, the best magazines for teens are the ones that print a teen's poem on a page by itself rather than burying it in a 30 line column, and Chrysalis, Yellow Barn and the poetry section of A River & Sound Review all do that. The standard length a young poet should target is 1 to 3 pages, which is the band where a poem has a beginning, a turn and an ending without asking the editor to make a big commitment of space.
Magazines by Age Band: Teens, Newcomers, Older Writers
Magazines by age band split into 3 shelves, and the shelves overlap more than they look. The teen shelf is the list at the top of this page: Chrysalis, Yellow Barn, Seventeen, Breakout and Teen Ink, where the reader and the writer are both young. The newcomer shelf ignores age entirely and asks only whether the writer has printed before, which is why A River & Sound Review sits here as much as anywhere: its issues take work from a 17 year old and a 72 year old in the same table of contents, and the 72 year old's story is read with the same attention as the 17 year old's. The older writer shelf is the third one, and it is the shelf most people never look for, but it exists. Journals that print a 60 year old's first story, or a 75 year old's return to poetry after a 30 year pause, treat age as a fact about the writer rather than a filter on the work, and a new older writer can submit to the exact same magazines a teen can, because the editor is reading the page, not the birth year. The honest summary is that the best literary magazines for older writers are the open submission journals, and the best literary magazines for new writers are the same journals, because "new" is a condition of the writer and "old" is a condition of the writer, and neither is visible on the first line of a poem.
From the UK to India: Magazines Outside the US
From the UK to India, magazines outside the US answer the same questions with different rules, and a young writer who submits only to American journals is working in 1 lane of a 3 lane road. The UK shelf for new writers includes small London and Edinburgh journals that run open submissions on a rolling 2 month cycle and print both poetry and flash fiction, and the UK rule that matters most is the one that mirrors the US one: the piece is read before the CV. India runs its own scene, and the literary magazines for new writers in india include the small city journals of Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru that have printed debut work since the 1990s, with a long habit of carrying a review page alongside the fiction so that a young story and a young review of that story can appear in the same issue. A River & Sound Review publishes in English for an international reader, so a teen writer in Manchester or Chennai submits to it under the same conditions as one in Austin: no fee, no age band, and a decision measured in weeks rather than months. The practical rule for a writer crossing that border is to keep the same 3 journal shortlist across both countries, because the work that is strong in a 40 word flash story is strong on both sides of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, and the journal that rejects it will reject it everywhere.
What the Issues Carry, and How to Read One
What the issues carry, and how to read one, comes down to a fixed map that repeats across nearly every journal in this field, including the issues of A River & Sound Review, where the map is the same page after page. A standard 64 page issue holds 10 to 14 poems, 3 to 5 stories, 1 to 2 essays, 2 reviews and an interview, and the numbers hold because the page count holds: an editor fills a 64 page issue, and the mix is the editor's answer to the question of what a reader needs in one sitting. A teen reading a magazine for the first time should read it in 2 passes. The first pass is the fiction, because a story shows the whole craft in miniature and a young writer absorbs structure from a 2000 word story faster than from a 2 page poem. The second pass is the poetry and the reviews, because the reviews tell you what other readers found in the same pieces, and that is a lesson no writing class teaches directly. The pulp fiction slot in an issue like those of A River & Sound Review is the bonus page: it is the one where the rules of a genre show up next to the rules of literary fiction, and the flash fiction slot next to it shows what a story becomes when you cut it to 500 words, which is the same exercise a teen writer should do on their own first draft before they ever submit it anywhere.