Journal of the Month’s Lit Mag Superlatives

An interview with Jenn from JOTM along with her "most likely" lit mag superlatives (her spin on our usual lists).

Dec 14, 2023

I’ve known about JOTM for years, but I don’t live anywhere for more than a few months so I was never able to sign up. Recently I reached out to ask her to share her insights after spending years and years collecting, reading, and distributing literary magazines. In a change up from our usual guest post, below you’ll find my full interview with her along with her fun spin on my request for some recommendations of lit mags. I love the idea of literary magazines being studied in classrooms by young writers. Gosh, I wish I had instructors like that when I was young. I think too often people assume what they’ll find in literary magazines is going to resemble the works they read from long-dead writers in high school. Contemporary writers. Writing as it is today. That’s a beautiful, massive amount of value, I think only literary magazines can provide. Jenn says it so well:

Literary magazines are art for art’s sake. Some may earn out, but that’s not their primary goal. They capture a mercurial, ephemeral slice of contemporary culture reflected in words. They are a writer’s first curated audience, a student’s first teaching tool about editing, and an editor’s bouquet of the best way to explain who we are. That’s special.

Fuck yes.

She also went ahead and created superlatives for some of her favorite lit mags (an idea we’re totally going to run with more in the future). It ties in nicely with our Best Lit Mags of 2023 countdown going on in our Sub Club Newsletter. Tomorrow is the top 5! Check it out after you’re done reading this.

Interview with Jenn from Journal of the Month!

Can you tell our readers what Journal of the Month is?

Journal of the Month is an inspiration delivery service. We drop shiny, hot-off-the-presses beautiful lit mags on your doorstep as frequently as you like.

How does it work?

When you sign up for a subscription, you tell us how often you’d like to get lit mags -- once a month, once every other month, or once a quarter -- and how many lit mags in total you’d like. So, if you sign up for a 6-issue subscription with a frequency of every other month, you can expect inspiration for an entire year, arriving at 2-month intervals and no more often than that.

I came up with the frequencies to address what I thought of as the New Yorker problem, back when the New Yorker existed in print only. You loved it so much that you read it only when you could read all of it, which was never. So it stacked up on your bedside table, an ever-growing source of guilt and self-loathing. If the New Yorker could come once every three months, I would have had a whole different personality (and have been better informed).

So that’s it. You always receive a current, print lit mag that includes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, and you’ll never receive the same lit mag twice. When you sign up, you can opt out of 3 lit mags from our list, but that’s as close as you can come to influencing our selection process. You never know which lit mag is coming your way and we like that. Who doesn’t love surprises?

There’s one restriction: subscribers must live in the US. We are not set up for international deliveries, unfortunately. We used to deliver to Canada, but the recent rate increases knocked us out of the market.

How did you come up with the idea, and how did you get it off the ground?

After I became an MFA, I’d spend hours at a bookstore, reading through the lit mag section to get a flavor for who was publishing what. At AWP, I’d meet editors, attend lit mag readings, flip through pages, and leave with the sense that I didn’t want to subscribe to one lit mag: I wanted to subscribe to them all. I created JOTM so that I could.

So I started with the lit mags I knew I liked. I approached editors at AWP, explained my idea, and asked if they wanted in. What surprised me most was how open and trusting most editors are. There’s a real entrepreneurial spirit among them. At the time, I hadn’t considered how many of them were also literary entrepreneurs, having started their own lit mags eons ago. When I’d describe my process to them, which involved them sending issues to a list of subscribers before I’d pay them, they agreed to do it. I was floored. How did they know I wasn’t a lit mag swindler?

It didn’t take long for the tables to turn-- for editors to offer their lit mags to me for my consideration. My table at AWP was inundated. My suitcase home was packed to the gills and so heavy. I received many more lit mags than I could read. I was a new mom, juggling parenthood, writing, and JOTM, as well as sending my writing out to lit mags for publication. But now I was also being put in a position to accept or reject lit mags for my service. It was thrilling and terrifying, but so empowering. What gave me the clout to reject them? It was my service, so I made the rules. I culled my favorites.

Has it just been you trucking along or do you have others who help out with the day to day? Is there a day-to-day?

No day-to-day. It’s just my husband and me. He coded the site and handles the bookkeeping and legal aspects of running a small company. I’m do the outreach. I communicate with editors about scheduling and mailings as well as with the instructors about journal selection and timing. Marketing falls into my camp, too, but other than teaching classes or moderating panels about literary magazines, I’m not too fond of marketing. JOTM finds subscribers and instructors largely through word of mouth.

How do you choose the magazines you send out? I noticed you've hit somewhat of a sweet spot. There is no "New Yorker" or "Paris Review" or "Harper's" in there. There also aren't too many new lesser known magazines. Instead you have a lot of well-regarded but not "in the public eye" type magazines. Where did you draw the line on both sides?

Thanks--I’m proud of my list. I seek literary journals that are strong, solid, and important. The writing they publish is artistically intriguing. Taken as a whole, each issue is a vital example of our cultural moment and has staying power as does the journal itself. Some journals on my list are more established, which just means that many more people already know what I know about them and have for a long time. But the whole point of running a service like this is to find journals that people may not yet know. They sign up because they want to find new favorites. So I introduce them to mine.

I’d take The Paris Review, but not the others you mention because, even though they are impressive publications that publish some creative work, they aren’t literary journals. They are funded by advertising and must adhere to market demands, which makes them an entirely different animal. Literary magazines are art for art’s sake. Some may earn out, but that’s not their primary goal. They capture a mercurial, ephemeral slice of contemporary culture reflected in words. They are a writer’s first curated audience, a student’s first teaching tool about editing, and an editor’s bouquet of the best way to explain who we are. That’s special.

I noticed The Gettysburg Review is on your list this year. How do you feel about what went down there? Is it the first time something like this has happened for a magazine in your collection?

It’s heartbreaking. A huge loss for the literary world. Not only is it a stunning literary magazine, the editorial staff is an extraordinary gem. I wrote a protest letter to the college president as so many others did. Gettysburg is a popular choice among the instructors who teach from JOTM journals in their graduate and undergraduate classes, and I asked them to describe their experience to the college president as well. As a writer, I’ve aspired to see my work in Gettysburg’s pages, having received countless rejections and I’m devastated that now I never will. This is not the first major JOTM journal to discontinue. We lost Tin House as well as Creative Nonfiction, which was available to our classroom program only. It’s crushing.

Earlier this year, upstreet folded under very different circumstances. The editor, founder, and driving artistic and logistical engine behind the journal, Vivian Dorsel, died in late 2021. Her son Mike finished the current issue-in-progress in the months after her death, and I had the opportunity to work with him in this final act of devotion. We corresponded quite a bit as he navigated the final assembly of the issue and production schedule -- publishing was clearly not his professional expertise -- and I was struck by how honoring his mom’s work in this hands-on way might help him process his grief. It felt like a great privilege to witness and support his efforts. I hope the subscribers who received the issue, which had an editor’s note from Mike, found it as meaningful as I do.

How closely do you work with the editors of these magazines? You have this line in the education section, " If you’d like, you can video conference with editors from those journals as well." So I assume there is an ongoing connection.

How well I know an editor depends. As a writer who attended local events and national conferences, I’d had the opportunity to meet some editors long before I began Journal of the Month 11 years ago, and nothing beats an IRL foundation on which to build a relationship. Some journals are run by a rotating staff of graduate students and those are the toughest to get to know well. But I do correspond with editors several times throughout the year to work out logistics and catch up on any changes in their organization or mine.

Journal of the Month is successful because when unexpected difficulties arise, we are nimble. We have to be. Because, as some great once proposed, “the only predictable thing in life is its unpredictability.” When an editorial office has been shuttered for a hurricane, a paper shortage delays production, or another unexpected incident prevents the mailing of issues, I ask other editors to pitch in. That’s a remarkably forgiving side effect of our service design: no one knows which literary journal they were supposed to receive and have no idea when a behind-the-scenes switcheroo has saved the day. Thankfully, editors are heroically communal in nature and always come to the rescue. Those experiences are bonding.

But your question specifically refers to our classroom program where an instructor -- usually of a graduate or undergraduate writing or publishing class, although I’ve supported high school instructors as well -- select four literary journals to use as a primary text in their class.

Editors of nearly all our journals are available for class-wide video conferences. I hear about those conferences from the editors, instructors, and, when I’ve run into them at AWP, students. They are a love fest! It’s fascinating for students to study a journal - develop a sense of the brand and how it’s represented in visuals and language - and then ask the creator of that brand how it came to be. They love hearing about the editorial process and being introduced to the undeniable fact that editors are humans, not simply gatekeepers. Nothing feels more rewarding to an editor than to arrive in a class that knows and values your work enough to ask insightful questions about its origins. Some instructors teach the same journals term after term in part to expose their students to their favorite inspiring editors.

You have two types of subscriptions on the website: subscribers and instructors. Which is more common?

We offer individual subscriptions and classroom subscriptions. A writer might buy herself a 12-issue monthly delivery of literary journals--that’s our most popular form of subscription. Individual subscriptions are also given as birthday gifts, holiday gifts, valentine’s day gifts, graduation gifts, etc. Recently a congregation bought a 24-issue subscription for their pastor.

We also run the aforementioned classroom program where an instructor designs a 4-issue subscription purchased by the students in their class and used as the primary text for lessons on writing or journal-making. I created this program when an instructor asked me if I would. She wanted flexibility and control. She needed to receive the first batch of issues before students arrived so she could adequately prep but also late enough so that they didn’t have to pay for journals if they dropped during add/drop. We worked it out. That flexibility is baked in the program design for every instructor.

Some instructors love this program. Classes benefit from passionate discussions, energized by living literature, which feels more malleable and relatable to students than materials in a text book do. Instructors benefit from being able to read cutting edge lit mags as part of their job, lit mags that are given to them for free as part of the program. Another bonus? They can develop relationships with editors and feel great about how their class is supporting literary institutions they prize. Students get exposed to editing as a profession and some feel empowered to introduce themselves a AWP to the editors they’ve met over zoom. A student once told me that she had work coming out in a journal she studied in a previous year. Winning all around.

But this program is not for everyone. I’ve worked with about 75 instructors through the years. An instructor might see one lit journal as they develop their curriculum, but there will be 3 others coming. Teaching from lit mags is a deep act of faith, faith that the lit mags will deliver maerial appropriate for the lessons they plan to teach. You can see how teaching the same set of stories year after year is the less risky move, but JOTM instructors aren’t motivated by risk aversion. They want to be surprised and influenced by what a lit mag will present to them. The die-hards return term after term, using the program for as long as they are teaching and when they leave, they convinced their replacement teachers to use it, too.

OK, and you have this bit, "Our subscribers include new writers, graduates of MFA programs, professional writers in need of a dose of inspiration, teachers and good-old, die-hard lovers of literature." If you had to cut that up into approximate percentages, what would they be? The reason I ask is because to target an audience, you'd have to first understand what that audience is made up of.

You ask a good question of a person with a product to sell. Who is your audience? With a follow up question then being -- how do you reach them? This is the question I asked of the magazine in which I paid for advertising the one time I did that. It’s sound marketing practice.

Aside from that one advertising opportunity and hosting a table at AWP, I don’t fund marketing or advertising. For one, JOTM is a small operation that brings in very little money. It’s a passion project, an act of literary advocacy.

Maybe that’s an elaborate justification for the fact that, as much as I respect marketers, I am not one of them. I don’t enjoy that kind of work and my time goes to other work that gives back more to me. So I don’t collect meaningful demographics on our subscribers or site visitors. People find JOTM through search engines, word of mouth, and articles like this one.

I think it's safe to say that the number one struggle for many editors is to find readers. It seems for JOTM that is your singular goal, so how do you do it? What methods or resources have you used that a magazine might model themselves after?

Again, I appreciate your question, but I’m not a marketer. What I bring to the lit journal world isn’t marketing mojo. Instead I try to use my access to editors as a way to elevate the experiences of writers.

Before I give presentations, I field editors with questions, like what do they want writers to know but can’t directly tell them? About five years ago, I moderated a panel of editors for a networking group for writers of color, and before I did, I asked non-participating editors if they had any questions for the writers in the audience as well. After the panel, several editors who couldn’t be present for it asked what nuggets I had learned. A few articles emerged from that experience: I wrote one as an interview focused on writers and another a feature that focused on editors about how literary journals cultivate inclusive practices. That’s an example of the ways I hope to influence literary journals.

If you're comfortable providing some numbers, I think people would love to know what happens to work they have published in these magazines. Often, they see an announcement, get some congratulations, and it fades. But with JOTM, if you get a story in one of these magazines, how many people are reading it? Learning from it?

You’ll need to check in with the lit mags themselves for their circulation numbers. Over the 11 years I’ve run JOTM, we’ve distributed about 30,000 literary journals to about 5,000 subscribers.

Can you break down a bit why you think literary magazines are a great tool for instructors?

There are so many ways to answer this question. I’m going to pull info from marketing emails that I’ve sent in the past.

Instructor Testimonials

On Class Discussions:

"During JOTM discussion sessions students were very vocal; more so than in any of our other discussions this semester! On delivery days, I was greeted with excited ooohs and ahhhs."

-- Amanda Rybin Koob from the University of Michigan

On Literary Citizenship:

"After using JOTM as the textbook for my mid-level poetry workshop, each student discovered a journal they love, many became literary magazine subscribers, and all came to realize “these journals, the modern vessels of contemporary writing, survive within our small sphere by our assistance" (student quote)."

-- Andrea Spofford from Austin Peay State University

In Publishing Classes

“When I inherited this class, one of the first things I noticed is that, even though students were enthusiastic about producing a literary journal, none of them had read one. As a class bonding exercise, students evaluate pieces from JOTM journals as though they were submitted to our journal. In terrific, productive discussions about the merits of the writing as well as the visual aesthetics, students develop the analytical skills they will apply as editors of our journal.”

-- Shannon Olson from St. Cloud State University

In Writing Classes for Non-Majors

“Each student reported on a different work from a JOTM issue, and from that assignment, students started to make sense of these pieces as a part of a larger, single product—making thematic links, tracking possible reasons for the choices the editors made, the layout, the variety and similarities of the pieces, their order, etc. Talking through their observations, they developed new insights into the complex editing process that goes into taking disparate pieces and shaping them into a cohesive product.”

-- David Armstrong from the University of the Incarnate Word

What Video Conferencing with Editors Adds:

"Every editor was generous with their time, and the process was really easy. My students prepared questions ahead of time and as the semester went on, they became more familiar with journals and editorial processes and their questions became better and better."

--Andrea Spofford From Austin Peay State University

“The sign-up process is organized and easy to follow. The magazines arrived like clockwork. It was so so easy and painless to add this to my syllabus. Also, the editors our class interviewed were the soul of courtesy and kindness, and what they had to say was interesting.”

-- Katrina Vandenberg from Hamline University

The Complete Picture:

"My grad students have already expressed hope that I will do this again next spring! It was a great way to bring together craft and professional development. We talked about what made poems work, we talked about differences in tastes, but they also found journals that were potential places to send work."

-- Morgan Frank from the University of Southern Mississippi

Here are assignments based on lit mags that wouldn’t be as feasible without them:

Incorporate literary magazines and use this as your lesson plan:

What do the stories in this literary magazine have in common in terms of subject matter and style, but also structure, tense, and point of view? What kind of poems would never be published here?
Assignment: Students present an analysis of a different manuscript from the same literary magazine, and as a class, they define the brand and culture of it.
How do literary magazines differ? Develop critical thinking skills while “reading as a writer.”
Assignment: Students write a review of a literary magazine, then get it published in The Review Review or New Pages. You can compile the reviews in a class wiki that serves as a publishing resource.
What subjects and styles characterize the writing from your class? How might a literary magazine reflect that aesthetic in, for example, the style of the table of contents, the inclusion of visual genres, the order of the manuscripts, the cover art, and the typeface?
Assignment: Design a literary magazine for the writing in your class that uses production elements reflective of your class aesthetic.
Explore why literary magazines are important to writers and readers.
Assignment: Each student prepares one question for a class-wide video conference with an editor from a mag you’ve studied. Topics range from the process of editing and book-building to the profession of editor.
Teach the life cycle: you write; you revise; you publish, your work gets taught in classes. With wealth and fame off the table, consider reasons for writing.
Assignment: Students submit writing to 3 literary magazines.

You can learn more about Journal of the Month on their website.

Journal of the Month’s Lit Mag Superlatives

Most Likely to Publish Unsolicited Submissions: Missouri Review

Why? Because 100% of the writing they publish arrives exactly the same way yours does: unsolicited, through the public submissions portal. This egalitarian approach puts your writing on equal footing with the greats--no reputation, however prominent, can swing open a backdoor-- relying on the scrappy merits of the writing itself to earn the right to appear in their pages.

Best Professionally Funded: VQR

VQR is the shape and size of a literary journal with the budget and professional staff of a mainstream glossy magazine. You’ll find poetry and fiction in each issue, although VQR earns its tagline as a national magazine for the largely reported articles and essays written by writers who might be paid to do on-site research, an impossibility for most literary journals.

Most Beloved By Writing Students: Booth

Not sure if it’s the flashy design or the quirky tone, but students devour and defend Booth like no other literary journal. Are they responding to what editor Robert Stapleton and his staff coined “boothiness?” When considering manuscripts for publication, Stapleton seeks the dynamic combination of strong concept, execution, and gravitas. Student readers love it.

Most Likely to Appear in Best American Essays 2023: New England Review

I did the math. Not only are two essays featured in the anthology itself, I counted seven NER essays in the “Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction” in the back. Additional NER essays and stories were honored in the 2023 Pushcart Prizes, Best American Stories, and Best American Science and Nature Writing and the O’Henry Winners, too. NER wins 2023’s literary MVP award!

Most Selected By JOTM Instructors in the 2020s: Ecotone

Writing and publishing instructors who rely on Journal of the Month to provide literary journals as the source materials for their lessons select Ecotone, a literary journal with a hankering for place-based literature. Do they find the journal to have particularly teachable stories, essays, and poems? Or do the editors provide enlightening class-wide video conferences? Probably it’s a combination of the two.

Best Visuals: F(r)iction

Do you know f(r)iction, a literary journal that publishes “the new, the weird, and the unconventional” with an emphasis on speculative fiction, poetry, and essays? Open an issue and you’ll be struck by the captivating artwork. Each published manuscript is accompanied by images designed specifically for it. These books are gorgeous!

Most Likely to Be Missed: Gettysburg Review

Announced in the early fall, Gettysburg Review shocked us with the terrible reveal of its cessation. The last issue is currently on preorder. Another giant felled.

Most Likely to Take a Chance on a Literary Entrepreneur: Harvard Review

HR was the first literary magazine to join Journal of the Month. Editor Christina Thompson didn’t need much convincing. She liked the idea from the start and offered to introduce me to other editors from my list of hopefuls. I was so grateful and continue to be.

Most Likely to Feature Voices You Didn’t Know You Needed to Know: The Common

With a previous feature on Kuwaiti fiction and a current portfolio of by immigrant, seasonal, and migrant farmer workers, The Common collects the writing of writers who are not traditionally marginalized but entirely off the radar of most US-produced literary journals. These themed issues transport us to vast communities across the globe, enriching our understanding with their explorations into “a modern sense of place.”

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