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Harbor Review
Harbor Review is a biannual online journal that publishes poetry, visual art, and reviews of poetry and art books. See website for their submission periods for each genre. They also offer micro-chapbook competitions three times a year.
COMP: An Interdisciplinary Journal
COMP is an online journal that publishes poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, hybrid-genre writing, short comics, and critical prose (craft essays, artist manifestos, criticism, reviews, essays on film, music, visual art, poetics). No minimum/maximum word counts.
Big Score Lit
Big Score Lit is a biannual journal launched in 2025. They are open to submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction during selected reading periods throughout the year, and literary criticism essays year-round. This is a paying market. Editors say, "Think deep dives or reorderings of the universe, not book reviews. We are interested in critical work about specific authors, whether modern or in the fairly recent past; authors of yesteryear (even those still publishing); 'scenes,' which includes, say, a certain poetry series or a coterie of authors in a given place; earthshaking manifestos; critical work that defies category. The main thing is that the criticism be engaging and substantive, and that it honor the work of the writers under consideration, whether or not the substance of the criticism is challenging or laudatory."
Forge Literary Magazine
The Forge Literary Magazine is edited by an international group of award-winning writers. They are open to English-language literary fiction and nonfiction in a diverse array of perspectives and dialects. Pieces under 3,000 words preferred, 3,500 maximum. The Forge is open to free submissions on the 1st of each month until they reach their Submittable cap of 200, after which there is a $3 entry fee. Contributors receive $100.
Dog Throat Journal
Launched in 2023, Dog Throat Journal is an online quarterly magazine of flash fiction and prose poems. Editor Victor D. Sandiego says, "We want your odd, your offbeat, your unconventional, your beautiful poetic prose. Strangeness is good, healthy. It allows us to see other points of view. We look for well crafted articulate pieces that make language dance, that speak to themes that outlive the moment, work that may contradict itself, just like human beings do, work that explores and exposes the mysticism of everyday life, work from the edges of artistic expression and freedom. We want work that rises above and defies genre." They prefer unpublished work but are open to reprints.
Do’s and Don’ts of a Winning Book Cover Design
It's not always easy for wordsmiths to express their book's core ideas in visual form. In this post, head North Street Book Prize judge Jendi Reiter breaks down their book cover do's and don'ts, with concrete examples. Annie Mydla, Managing Editor So you've written your book. The long slog is over...or is it? Not quite. Without a standout cover to get readers' attention, your book might have a hard time getting off the ground. Readers are picky. They need to know at a glance what a book's genre, tone, and main ideas are before they commit to a purchase. Contest judges are even pickier. In the North Street Book Prize competition, perhaps 1% of our 1,000+ annual submissions will win an award. So, while we don't judge books solely by their covers, an attractive, professional-looking cover can make the difference between books that are equally strong in other... [continue]
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive, or Archive.org, is a free digital lending library that offers millions of free texts, movies, software, music, TV news broadcasts, and more. They host the Wayback Machine, which archives websites that have been taken down
Text Power Telling
Text Power Telling is a nonprofit literary organization that provides opportunities for survivors of sexual trauma to heal through creative writing. They publish an online literary journal and sponsor writing workshops online and in Bergen County, NJ.
In Substack We Trust: Navigating the Tension Between Powerful Tools and Platform Dependency
Publishing industry expert Jane Friedman interviewed several successful Substack newsletter authors at a June 2025 panel at NonFictionNow about the pros and cons of the platform, how and whether to monetize your newsletter audience, and barriers to discoverability of lesser-known writers. Panelists were book critic Ann Kjellberg, novelist Amran Gowani, and political journalist Noah Berlatsky. This transcript is hosted on Berlatsky's Patreon.
After
By Diane Elayne Dees After you've hired the trainer, changed your hairstyle, painted the walls, bought a new wardrobe, rearranged the furniture— after you've risked new nail colors, bought new shoes, discarded the mattress, sold your jewelry, met with your bankers, purchased better bras, changed the dinnerwear— you luxuriate in the mauves and orchids and teals and brightness of it all. You are a new woman. The problem is that the former woman—the younger, broken one—is still there, admiring your pencil skirts while mocking you for thinking you could ever leave her behind. She covets your freedom, you desire her youth. The cleverly colored house isn't big enough for the both of you; you bump into each other at every turn. Will she ever move out, you wonder, or—after you've cried all your tears and exhausted all your rage, after you've stopped cursing reality— will you just forgive her... [continue]
new words {press}
new words {press} publishes trans* and gender-expansive poets. They appreciate hybrid and experimental work, as well as more traditional forms and free verse. "We want to see how queerness is influencing process, diction, syntax, and craft." They publish chapbooks and a thrice-yearly literary journal. See their website for special anthology calls and submission period dates.
Write More Than One Book—Your Current Draft Will Thank You
Want to improve your current manuscript? Picture yourself writing more than one book. Annie Mydla, Managing Editor I have a question for first-time authors: Have you thought about writing more than one book? This question might sound silly if your first work-in-progress is still...in progress. But I put it to you that "I can write multiple books" is one of the most powerful ideas an author can have. Why? Because it frees us to do what's right for this book. I've critiqued over 600 full-length books and manuscripts, and their number-one problem is having too much stuff. Understandably so. Cutting things back can feel like a betrayal of our precious creations. But what if we imagine writing more than one book? All of a sudden, the need to smush all our best ideas into one volume goes away. If we have favorite parts that are starting to compete with... [continue]
Sontag Mag
Launched in 2023, Sontag Mag is a thrice-yearly online poetry journal that publishes both original English-language writing and translations. If submitting a translation, include the source poem and permission from the author. Submission periods are January to March, May to July, and September to November.
Knees
By E. Laura Golberg
In the engagement photo, my father looks taller
than my mother in her war-time dress.
She had two inches on him.
She told me, "I bent my knees."
You can just see, if you look carefully,
two bulges of knee half-way down her skirt.
That's why he married her. She knew
what mattered to him, how she could mend things.
In the photo forty years later, when he receives
his honorary doctorate, he stands in his red robe,
orange sash. She's next to him again, wearing
her silk suit. Her legs are straight this time.
Stone Butch Blues
By Leslie Feinberg. This 1993 autobiographical novel is a radical queer classic. Jess, a factory worker in Buffalo in the 1960s and 70s, endures family rejection and police violence as a butch lesbian. Black-market medical treatment allows Jess to live as a man for awhile, affording them some safety but alienating them from their lesbian community and history. The choice to revert to a gender-nonconforming appearance feels authentic yet dangerous. Meanwhile, they're attempting to build solidarity in the workers' movement without exposing themselves to anti-queer attacks, a path that culminates in activism in 1980s New York City alongside their trans femme lover. In keeping with Feinberg's Communist philosophy, the book is free to download from their website, or available from Lulu.com in hard copy for the cost of printing and shipping.
The Best of Michael Swanwick
By Michael Swanwick. This first volume in a career retrospective of the award-winning speculative fiction author spans over 25 years of creative tales about planetary consciousness, time travel, steampunk con artists, dinosaur tourist attractions, and what would be gained and lost if we could re-engineer the human brain.
State of Grass
By Janet MacFadyen. This poetry collection brings the topic of family trauma out of the merely confessional and into the mythic. On retreat in Ireland after her father's death, an older woman recovers her incest memories, the lineaments of her story emerging like a preserved bog body or the archaeological traces of a famine-destroyed village. The land's stark beauty and endurance create a space for her to hold her personal recovery in historical perspective, creating a fellowship with her wounded ancestors.
Enter Ghost
By Isabella Hammad. A troupe of Palestinian actors navigate obstacles to stage an Arabic-language adaptation of Hamlet in the West Bank, angering the Israeli government with their implied critique of an illegitimate ruler. This subtle and thought-provoking literary novel is narrated by Sonia, an expat with British citizenship who returns to her family home to find direction in life when her acting career stalls. Her journey from spectator to activist mirrors Hamlet's emergence from passivity. The story explores what it means to engage in political resistance as an artist in our current moment: Hammad neither overstates the power of protest theater, nor succumbs to crude materialist dismissal of art as a luxury or distraction.
Invisible Histories
Invisible Histories locates, collects, researches, and creates community-based, educational programming around LGBTQ history in the Deep South. Their site includes oral histories, a guide to making and archiving zines, digitized queer newspapers and photographs, and materials from their past educational exhibits in galleries and universities.
Marketing Basics on a Budget: An Interview with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of The Frugal Book Promoter
Indie authors often assume that marketing will cost an arm and a leg. Or they're embarrassed to promote themselves at all. Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of The Frugal Book Promoter, shares advice for bold and effective marketing on a budget. Annie Mydla, Managing Editor Book marketing is among the top stressors for many of our North Street Book Prize entrants. Enter Carolyn Howard-Johnson, book promotion expert, marketing coach, and North Street co-sponsor. Her forthcoming new edition of How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically will show authors how to leverage "forever reviews" to keep books selling far into the future. This interview covers her effective (and frugal) approach to marketing, how to choose your marketing strategies, forever reviews, and more. ANNIE MYDLA: Many authors assume that promoting their own books will be expensive. Meanwhile, you're an expert on marketing frugally. What in our culture is perpetuating the idea... [continue]
The Autism Parent Memoir I’d Love to Read
Are you writing a memoir about raising a child with autism? Consider autistic readers' perspectives to avoid stereotypes. Be curious about other ways of processing information, and strengthen your literary craft with introspection about how your own mind works. Annie Mydla, Managing Editor Note: In this article, I mention things that "autistic people do" and experience. This can only ever be a figure of speech, because autistic people are so different from each other. As the saying goes, "If you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person." As an early-round judge in the North Street Book Prize, I see several parent memoirs (or APMs) per year by non-autistic parents raising an autistic child or children, often with common comorbidities like learning disabilities. My autistic profile outwardly differs from the children these memoirs tend to be about—I'm hyperverbal and lack a learning disability. But we share a lot of... [continue]
nighthawks
By Tobey Kaplan four people in the window corner diner woman examines a piece of paper in her hand while a young guy washes dishes the man she knows smokes a cigarette barely touches her fingers his right her left he might want her to meet his mother he wants to kiss her the soda jerk tidying up is telling jokes everything closed the light and air ash golden glare from the window one other man wears a darker fedora his back to us she's looking at the paper in her hand a green tab scribble indicating how much is owed for coffee a ticket to the movie down the street torn in half after she entered the check for the meal paid for by that man who is afraid to look at her he might be her estranged lover her mystery father a respected former teacher who recognized her gifts or what's... [continue]
Tertulia
Tertulia is a no-frills website builder for authors who don't want to tinker with complex software programs. They have a library of website templates designed to showcase books, and an email capture tool that integrates with popular newsletter programs like Mailchimp. Pricing is under $10/month.
Book Covers, Marketing, and Authenticity: An Interview with Laura Duffy of Laura Duffy Design
A handsome book cover that's right for your genre can increase sales by a factor of two or more. But does working with a professional have to feel like a trust fall? Designer Laura Duffy doesn't think so. Annie Mydla, Managing Editor This year, Laura Duffy Design is providing free benefits to all entrants and winners of the North Street Book Prize. All entrants receive a detailed PDF about book cover design, and winners receive customized book design and marketing services. Laura Duffy here joins Winning Writers managing editor Annie Mydla to talk about helping indie authors get the most out of her services, from the cover to essential marketing elements like metadata, Amazon keywords, and copy. Watch the entire interview with Laura or read this lightly edited transcript. Key moments (links lead to the YouTube video): 0:55 Why do authors... [continue]
Writing Co-Lab: 100 Days of Creative Resistance
Writing Co-Lab is a teaching cooperative that offers online creative writing workshops. Their project "100 Days of Creative Resistance" delivers a free daily email of encouragement, opposition, and commiseration for each of the first 100 days of the 47th president's regime, beginning on January 20, 2025. These brief essays are archived on their website. Participating authors include R.O. Kwon, Denne Michele Norris, Edgar Gomez, Tenim Fruchter, and Robert Jones, Jr.
Finding the best awards for your book: An interview with Book Award Pro founder Hannah Jacobson
"No matter how you decide to publish your book, there are accolades for you"—and Book Award Pro will help you find them. Annie Mydla, Managing Editor This year, Book Award Pro is giving three free months of their unique accolades-finding services to all entrants and winners of the North Street Book Prize. Book Award Pro founder and CEO Hannah Jacobson joins Winning Writers managing editor Annie Mydla to discuss: Why book awards are within your reach as an author How Book Award Pro finds the best awards for your book from over 11,000 submission opportunities How book awards connect your book to new audiences How Book Award Pro's in-house-designed AI protects author privacy and intellectual property What is included in the 3 free months of Essentials- and Pro-tier services that North Street entrants and winners will receive Watch the entire interview with... [continue]
Poems You Need
Poets Melissa Studdard and Kelli Russell Agodon co-host this fun, immersive YouTube video series showcasing two contemporary poets each month. The hosts read the poems aloud and discuss why they work. Featured authors have included Stephanie Burt, Major Jackson, Diane Seuss, and Pamela Uschuk.
How To Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses
By Dennis James Sweeney. This concise, friendly guide to building a literary career in the small press world is a one-stop shop for all your questions, from the "how" to the "why" to "what next?" Learn about selecting the right journal for your work, the mechanics of the process from both sides of the editor's desk, keeping track of submissions, what happens when your book is published, keeping up faith in your writing, and identifying your deepest personal goals for your work in the world. The focus is on community-building, first and foremost. Think of your publications as part of a conversation rather than a judgment on your worth. Sweeney is an experimental essayist, poet, and teacher at Amherst College and GrubStreet in Boston.
Daniel Lavery’s “The Only Advice I’ll Ever Have for Writers”
Daniel Lavery was the co-founder of the Internet sensation The Toast and an advice columnist for Slate. His books include the novel Women's Hotel and the bestselling humor collection Texts from Jane Eyre. In this 2025 installment of his Substack newsletter The Chatner, he makes an engaging case for keeping your author bios and readings mercifully brief, prioritizing book description over back-cover blurbs, and getting invited to Australia whenever possible.
Convertio
Convert your files to 300+ different formats with Convertio, a subscription-based online tool that starts at $9.99 a month for files up to 500 MB, with higher price tiers for larger files and conversion volume.
Public Domain Image Archive
The Public Domain Review launched this online database in 2025. It features over 10,000 vintage illustrations and photographs that are in the public domain, from medieval times to the early 20th century. Search by artist, century, style, theme, or keyword. This is a great resource for book designers and collage artists
Explore Your Premise
Want to impress agents, publishers, and contest judges? Explore your premise—and only your premise. Fiction, memoir, poetry, children's books, middle grade, art books, graphic novels…almost any book will fail when it wanders away from its premise. Why does it happen so often? And what are signs to look out for? Annie Mydla, Managing Editor I see thousands of books and manuscripts a year, and about 85% of them have the same problem: They include too much stuff. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a strong premise get lost under an avalanche of subplots, characters, genre identities, themes, settings, time periods, and background. An eleventh-century Viking princess is taken back to the early Roman Empire. Wow, I've never heard of a time-travel story where someone from the past goes even further into the past! Genius! …but the rising action has so many subplots that the... [continue]
Quick Start Guide to Children’s and Young Adult Publishing
This 2024 article on the writing resource site Authors Publish breaks down the different genres of children's and YA literature, from board books to chapter books, with advice on how to research your market and submit the right kind of manuscript to a publisher.
FISH List of Lively Independent Literary Magazines
Author Charlie Fish, editor of the online journal Fiction on the Web, compiled this list of over 1,800 independent literary journals that he recommends based on their longevity, transparency, active readership, and author-friendly submission practices like rapid response time and no fees. Though the list would be more useful if the journal names were hyperlinked, the metrics that he uses are ones that more authors should consider when submitting. As he explains on the Chill Subs blog, "My metrics for the FISH list focus less on awards and prestige, and much more on the features of the magazines themselves. Is there an active community of readers? Do the editors give feedback on submitted stories? Is the magazine going to stick around, or fade away like so many do?...I don’t want to give too much weight to the same-old darlings of the lit mag scene: I want to illuminate the... [continue]
Georgia Poetry Society
The Georgia Poetry Society is a well-established literary organization with membership in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (NFSPS). They host a monthly poetry open mic online (not limited to Georgia authors). Other offerings include poetry contests, website listings for members' books, and online courses on the craft and marketing of writing.
Queer-Owned Bookstores to Love and Support
This 2024 list from Electric Literature features queer-owned independent bookstores to consider for your book tours and purchases, from lesbian-owned Bookends in Florence, MA to outposts in Midwestern and Southern conservative states.
Rebel Ever After
Novelist Ella Dawson, author of the bisexual second-chances romance But How Are You, Really (Dutton, 2024), hosts the podcast Rebel Ever After to interview the authors of newly released romance novels about writing socially responsible love stories. Their lively conversations have much to offer writers in all genres about such topics as revision, marketing, writing for different age groups, and respectful portrayal of different identities.
Is Your First-Person Narrator Hurting Your Story?
Is your first-person narrator hurting your story? Ten traps to watch out for, and resources that can help. Annie Mydla, Managing Editor The author wants the reader to feel close to the story, characters, and narrative voice. They believe that first-person narration will make readers experience the story as they do. Why not? The reader will "see" and "feel" everything in the same order, and in the same detail, as the author does in their head. This approach may seem common-sensical, but reader experience doesn't exactly work that way. Recreating the environment we see and feel in our heads through a first-person narrator rarely achieves the author's intent. It's not artful enough. Good fiction is successful not because it draws from the "common sense" we know from everyday life, but because its author has become an expert at creating an artificially immersive experience for the reader. That takes... [continue]
Jay Wurts, Writer and Editor
Editor Jay Wurts offers a range of services to indie authors, including developmental editing, ghostwriting, and coaching on how to make your book project more marketable to agents and publishers. He has experience helping culturally diverse and ESL authors package their work for a mainstream audience. He also works with publishers as a freelance editor or ghostwriter.
Valparaiso Poetry Review
A publication of Valparaiso University in Indiana, Valparaiso Poetry Review is a well-regarded online literary magazine of poetry, reviews, and criticism. Journal has been published since 1999; currently, the archives that are free to read online go back to 2010. See website for review submission guidelines.
The StoryGraph
The StoryGraph is a social network for sharing book reviews and recommendations. Created in 2019 by Nadia Odunayo, the app grew in popularity in 2024 as an alternative to Amazon-owned Goodreads. Unlike its larger competitor, The StoryGraph allows half-star and quarter-star ratings. It also includes content and trigger warnings for books; the option to leave a check-box review rather than a written paragraph; and a journaling feature to take notes on books as you read them. Goodreads users can export their data to The StoryGraph so they don't lose their wishlists and reading history. Read an interview with the creator in The Huffington Post.
Brawl
Launched in 2024 by Martheus Perkins and Taylor Franson-Thiel, Brawl is a quirky online poetry journal that seeks "groovy, snappy, sound work, and musical language." The tongue-in-cheek list of the editors' special interests includes sports, dinosaurs, the body, and "Mom trauma (: " but your best bet is to read past contributors online. Published poems are accompanied by bold pop-culture illustrations. When submitting, you can specify which editor should read your work, based on the list of their interests. No "racism, homophobia, zionism, transphobia, sexism, ageism, ableism ETC."
American Diary Project
The American Diary Project accepts old diaries and journals from ordinary Americans and their descendants, so that their stories will not be lost. The diaries are catalogued and preserved following Library of Congress archiving methods. The American Diary Project is in the process of digitizing their collection, most of which will be free for the public to access. For writers, this archive can be useful in researching the material culture of a period, social attitudes, and speech patterns.
Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute
The Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute is an online community dedicated to developing a visual lexicon of consumer ephemera from the 1970s until now. Whether you're adding descriptive details to your historical fiction or looking for the exact vibe for your book cover, you and your design team can benefit from CARI's classification of style differences that we usually only recognize intuitively.
We Are Not Numbers
We Are Not Numbers is an ongoing archive of personal stories from emerging Palestinian writers. Launched in 2014, the project trains Palestinian journalists to reach an English-language audience. Its mentorship program pairs young Palestinians with experienced writers to help shape and publish their narratives. WANN's goal is to help people outside Palestine understand the lived experiences of occupation and exile. Their logo was redesigned in 2024 as a kite to reference the poem "If I must die" by the late Dr. Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in 2023.
Ojo
By Donald Mengay. In this Joycean novel about queer life in the American West, a young man flees his repressive Cleveland suburb and the ghost of his first lover, to find himself as an artist in a trailer on the edge of the Colorado desert. In the small town of Ojo Caliente, Jake's unlikely family-of-choice comes to include a swinging pastor and his lesbian wife's feminist book club, a construction worker torn between his passion for Jake and his comically fertile wife, and an assertive Latino lover who lives in a household of sharp-tongued trans femmes. This fragile utopia is further riven by the advent of AIDS, yet sensuality and farcical humor leaven the grief. Reading this multivocal, stream-of-consciousness story is like overhearing tantalizing snippets of strangers' conversations on a long train ride. One gradually learns to recognize their voices without context or transitions, and the close attention required to follow the narrative makes... [continue]
Fixing the One-Dimensional Protagonist
Is your main character too bland? 10 mental traps authors fall into, and exercises to help get back out. Annie Mydla, Managing Editor In November, I'm deep into writing feedback for North Street Book Prize entrants. Among other things, this means meeting a lot of empty-feeling main characters over and over again. Here are a few of the usual suspects: A tough, masculine man who's smarter than most. He's always fair to others, even though he's the victim of a lot of unfairness. A smart, sexy woman who's not like the other girls. A down-to-earth, sweet, misunderstood woman who has often come out the worse in love. Her innocence is what makes her attractive to the male romantic lead. An intelligent, somewhat jaded man who has little patience for normals, but passionate excitement for his chosen field. He has all the time in the world for special... [continue]
Don’t Know Tough
By Eli Cranor. This heart-wrenching novel limns American toxic masculinity and small-town desperation. Billy Lowe is a small-town Arkansas football star who's only ever known abuse and poverty. His response to everything is violence, but deep down he wants to be a better person. His Coach thinks of himself as a heroic Christian mentor, but when it comes down to it, his savior complex and selfishness get in the way. Coach's daughter is the one who actually understands the meaning of sacrificial compassion. She not only sees Billy's innocent soul but is willing to share his stigmatized and dangerous existence in order to reach him. Their unlikely friendship revolves around literature. If anything can give Billy the self-awareness to break intergenerational patterns, it might be a book.
Making Room: Three Decades of Fighting for Beds, Belonging, and a Safe Place for LGBTQ Youth
By Carl Siciliano. This luminous memoir by the founder of the Ali Forney Center, the nation's first homeless shelter for queer and trans teens, is both a spiritual autobiography and an incisive social history of the 1980s-90s. Siciliano shows how we could save children's lives with a small fraction of our city and state budgets, yet often ignore this population because of racism, queerphobia, and even respectability politics in the gay community. Moreover, the problem would not exist on such a huge scale without hateful theology from Christian institutions that causes families to throw their queer kids out on the streets. Siciliano poignantly describes a lifelong struggle with his Catholic faith. The church is responsible for a great deal of abuse, but the tradition also gave him role models for a life of sacred service, like St. Francis and Dorothy Day. As a spiritual touchstone, the author returns to memories of Ali Forney, a... [continue]
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
By Deesha Philyaw. These bittersweet stories immerse the reader in the lives of Black women struggling against patriarchy and hypocrisy. Mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and secret queer lovers weigh the risks of authentic intimacy versus passing on patterns of repression to the next generation in order to keep them safe. Philyaw's debut book was a National Book Award finalist and a PEN/Faulkner Prize winner.
