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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)

A literature review is a critical analysis and synthesis of existing research on a particular topic. It provides an overview of the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps, and highlights key findings in the literature. 1 The purpose of a literature review is to situate your own research within the context of existing scholarship, demonstrating your understanding of the topic and showing how your work contributes to the ongoing conversation in the field. Learning how to write a literature review is a critical tool for successful research. Your ability to summarize and synthesize prior research pertaining to a certain topic demonstrates your grasp on the topic of study, and assists in the learning process. 

Table of Contents

• What is the purpose of literature review? 
• a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction: 
• b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes: 
• c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs: 
• d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts: 

How to write a good literature review 

• Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question: 
• Decide on the Scope of Your Review: 
• Select Databases for Searches: 
• Conduct Searches and Keep Track: 
• Review the Literature: 
• Organize and Write Your Literature Review: 
• How to write a literature review faster with Paperpal? 
• Frequently asked questions 

What is a literature review?

A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the existing literature, establishes the context for their own research, and contributes to scholarly conversations on the topic. One of the purposes of a literature review is also to help researchers avoid duplicating previous work and ensure that their research is informed by and builds upon the existing body of knowledge.

What is the purpose of literature review?

A literature review serves several important purposes within academic and research contexts. Here are some key objectives and functions of a literature review: 2  

1. Contextualizing the Research Problem: The literature review provides a background and context for the research problem under investigation. It helps to situate the study within the existing body of knowledge. 

2. Identifying Gaps in Knowledge: By identifying gaps, contradictions, or areas requiring further research, the researcher can shape the research question and justify the significance of the study. This is crucial for ensuring that the new research contributes something novel to the field. 

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3. Understanding Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks: Literature reviews help researchers gain an understanding of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used in previous studies. This aids in the development of a theoretical framework for the current research. 

4. Providing Methodological Insights: Another purpose of literature reviews is that it allows researchers to learn about the methodologies employed in previous studies. This can help in choosing appropriate research methods for the current study and avoiding pitfalls that others may have encountered. 

5. Establishing Credibility: A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with existing scholarship, establishing their credibility and expertise in the field. It also helps in building a solid foundation for the new research. 

6. Informing Hypotheses or Research Questions: The literature review guides the formulation of hypotheses or research questions by highlighting relevant findings and areas of uncertainty in existing literature. 

Literature review example

Let’s delve deeper with a literature review example: Let’s say your literature review is about the impact of climate change on biodiversity. You might format your literature review into sections such as the effects of climate change on habitat loss and species extinction, phenological changes, and marine biodiversity. Each section would then summarize and analyze relevant studies in those areas, highlighting key findings and identifying gaps in the research. The review would conclude by emphasizing the need for further research on specific aspects of the relationship between climate change and biodiversity. The following literature review template provides a glimpse into the recommended literature review structure and content, demonstrating how research findings are organized around specific themes within a broader topic. 

Literature Review on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity:

Climate change is a global phenomenon with far-reaching consequences, including significant impacts on biodiversity. This literature review synthesizes key findings from various studies: 

a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction:

Climate change-induced alterations in temperature and precipitation patterns contribute to habitat loss, affecting numerous species (Thomas et al., 2004). The review discusses how these changes increase the risk of extinction, particularly for species with specific habitat requirements. 

b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes:

Observations of range shifts and changes in the timing of biological events (phenology) are documented in response to changing climatic conditions (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003). These shifts affect ecosystems and may lead to mismatches between species and their resources. 

c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs:

The review explores the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity, emphasizing ocean acidification’s threat to coral reefs (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Changes in pH levels negatively affect coral calcification, disrupting the delicate balance of marine ecosystems. 

d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts:

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the literature review discusses various adaptive strategies adopted by species and conservation efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (Hannah et al., 2007). It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for effective conservation planning. 

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Writing a literature review involves summarizing and synthesizing existing research on a particular topic. A good literature review format should include the following elements. 

Introduction: The introduction sets the stage for your literature review, providing context and introducing the main focus of your review. 

• Opening Statement: Begin with a general statement about the broader topic and its significance in the field. 
• Scope and Purpose: Clearly define the scope of your literature review. Explain the specific research question or objective you aim to address. 
• Organizational Framework: Briefly outline the structure of your literature review, indicating how you will categorize and discuss the existing research. 
• Significance of the Study: Highlight why your literature review is important and how it contributes to the understanding of the chosen topic. 
• Thesis Statement: Conclude the introduction with a concise thesis statement that outlines the main argument or perspective you will develop in the body of the literature review. 

Body: The body of the literature review is where you provide a comprehensive analysis of existing literature, grouping studies based on themes, methodologies, or other relevant criteria. 

• Organize by Theme or Concept: Group studies that share common themes, concepts, or methodologies. Discuss each theme or concept in detail, summarizing key findings and identifying gaps or areas of disagreement. 
• Critical Analysis: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each study. Discuss the methodologies used, the quality of evidence, and the overall contribution of each work to the understanding of the topic. 
• Synthesis of Findings: Synthesize the information from different studies to highlight trends, patterns, or areas of consensus in the literature. 
• Identification of Gaps: Discuss any gaps or limitations in the existing research and explain how your review contributes to filling these gaps. 
• Transition between Sections: Provide smooth transitions between different themes or concepts to maintain the flow of your literature review. 

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Conclusion: The conclusion of your literature review should summarize the main findings, highlight the contributions of the review, and suggest avenues for future research. 

• Summary of Key Findings: Recap the main findings from the literature and restate how they contribute to your research question or objective. 
• Contributions to the Field: Discuss the overall contribution of your literature review to the existing knowledge in the field. 
• Implications and Applications: Explore the practical implications of the findings and suggest how they might impact future research or practice. 
• Recommendations for Future Research: Identify areas that require further investigation and propose potential directions for future research in the field. 
• Final Thoughts: Conclude with a final reflection on the importance of your literature review and its relevance to the broader academic community. 

Conducting a literature review

Conducting a literature review is an essential step in research that involves reviewing and analyzing existing literature on a specific topic. It’s important to know how to do a literature review effectively, so here are the steps to follow: 1  

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:

• Select a topic that is relevant to your field of study. 
• Clearly define your research question or objective. Determine what specific aspect of the topic do you want to explore? 

Decide on the Scope of Your Review:

• Determine the timeframe for your literature review. Are you focusing on recent developments, or do you want a historical overview? 
• Consider the geographical scope. Is your review global, or are you focusing on a specific region? 
• Define the inclusion and exclusion criteria. What types of sources will you include? Are there specific types of studies or publications you will exclude? 

Select Databases for Searches:

• Identify relevant databases for your field. Examples include PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. 
• Consider searching in library catalogs, institutional repositories, and specialized databases related to your topic. 

Conduct Searches and Keep Track:

• Develop a systematic search strategy using keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and other search techniques. 
• Record and document your search strategy for transparency and replicability. 
• Keep track of the articles, including publication details, abstracts, and links. Use citation management tools like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley to organize your references. 

Review the Literature:

• Evaluate the relevance and quality of each source. Consider the methodology, sample size, and results of studies. 
• Organize the literature by themes or key concepts. Identify patterns, trends, and gaps in the existing research. 
• Summarize key findings and arguments from each source. Compare and contrast different perspectives. 
• Identify areas where there is a consensus in the literature and where there are conflicting opinions. 
• Provide critical analysis and synthesis of the literature. What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing research? 

Organize and Write Your Literature Review:

• Literature review outline should be based on themes, chronological order, or methodological approaches. 
• Write a clear and coherent narrative that synthesizes the information gathered. 
• Use proper citations for each source and ensure consistency in your citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). 
• Conclude your literature review by summarizing key findings, identifying gaps, and suggesting areas for future research. 

Whether you’re exploring a new research field or finding new angles to develop an existing topic, sifting through hundreds of papers can take more time than you have to spare. But what if you could find science-backed insights with verified citations in seconds? That’s the power of Paperpal’s new Research feature!  

How to write a literature review faster with Paperpal?

Paperpal, an AI writing assistant, integrates powerful academic search capabilities within its writing platform. With the Research feature, you get 100% factual insights, with citations backed by 250M+ verified research articles, directly within your writing interface with the option to save relevant references in your Citation Library. By eliminating the need to switch tabs to find answers to all your research questions, Paperpal saves time and helps you stay focused on your writing.   

Here’s how to use the Research feature:  

• Ask a question: Get started with a new document on paperpal.com. Click on the “Research” feature and type your question in plain English. Paperpal will scour over 250 million research articles, including conference papers and preprints, to provide you with accurate insights and citations. 
• Review and Save: Paperpal summarizes the information, while citing sources and listing relevant reads. You can quickly scan the results to identify relevant references and save these directly to your built-in citations library for later access. 
• Cite with Confidence: Paperpal makes it easy to incorporate relevant citations and references into your writing, ensuring your arguments are well-supported by credible sources. This translates to a polished, well-researched literature review. 

The literature review sample and detailed advice on writing and conducting a review will help you produce a well-structured report. But remember that a good literature review is an ongoing process, and it may be necessary to revisit and update it as your research progresses. By combining effortless research with an easy citation process, Paperpal Research streamlines the literature review process and empowers you to write faster and with more confidence. Try Paperpal Research now and see for yourself.  

Frequently asked questions

A literature review is a critical and comprehensive analysis of existing literature (published and unpublished works) on a specific topic or research question and provides a synthesis of the current state of knowledge in a particular field. A well-conducted literature review is crucial for researchers to build upon existing knowledge, avoid duplication of efforts, and contribute to the advancement of their field. It also helps researchers situate their work within a broader context and facilitates the development of a sound theoretical and conceptual framework for their studies.

Literature review is a crucial component of research writing, providing a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. The aim is to keep professionals up to date by providing an understanding of ongoing developments within a specific field, including research methods, and experimental techniques used in that field, and present that knowledge in the form of a written report. Also, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the scholar in his or her field.  

Before writing a literature review, it’s essential to undertake several preparatory steps to ensure that your review is well-researched, organized, and focused. This includes choosing a topic of general interest to you and doing exploratory research on that topic, writing an annotated bibliography, and noting major points, especially those that relate to the position you have taken on the topic. 

Literature reviews and academic research papers are essential components of scholarly work but serve different purposes within the academic realm. 3 A literature review aims to provide a foundation for understanding the current state of research on a particular topic, identify gaps or controversies, and lay the groundwork for future research. Therefore, it draws heavily from existing academic sources, including books, journal articles, and other scholarly publications. In contrast, an academic research paper aims to present new knowledge, contribute to the academic discourse, and advance the understanding of a specific research question. Therefore, it involves a mix of existing literature (in the introduction and literature review sections) and original data or findings obtained through research methods. 

Literature reviews are essential components of academic and research papers, and various strategies can be employed to conduct them effectively. If you want to know how to write a literature review for a research paper, here are four common approaches that are often used by researchers.  Chronological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the chronological order of publication. It helps to trace the development of a topic over time, showing how ideas, theories, and research have evolved.  Thematic Review: Thematic reviews focus on identifying and analyzing themes or topics that cut across different studies. Instead of organizing the literature chronologically, it is grouped by key themes or concepts, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of various aspects of the topic.  Methodological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the research methods employed in different studies. It helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies and allows the reader to evaluate the reliability and validity of the research findings.  Theoretical Review: A theoretical review examines the literature based on the theoretical frameworks used in different studies. This approach helps to identify the key theories that have been applied to the topic and assess their contributions to the understanding of the subject.  It’s important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, and a literature review may combine elements of more than one approach. The choice of strategy depends on the research question, the nature of the literature available, and the goals of the review. Additionally, other strategies, such as integrative reviews or systematic reviews, may be employed depending on the specific requirements of the research.

The literature review format can vary depending on the specific publication guidelines. However, there are some common elements and structures that are often followed. Here is a general guideline for the format of a literature review:  Introduction:   Provide an overview of the topic.  Define the scope and purpose of the literature review.  State the research question or objective.  Body:   Organize the literature by themes, concepts, or chronology.  Critically analyze and evaluate each source.  Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the studies.  Highlight any methodological limitations or biases.  Identify patterns, connections, or contradictions in the existing research.  Conclusion:   Summarize the key points discussed in the literature review.  Highlight the research gap.  Address the research question or objective stated in the introduction.  Highlight the contributions of the review and suggest directions for future research.

Both annotated bibliographies and literature reviews involve the examination of scholarly sources. While annotated bibliographies focus on individual sources with brief annotations, literature reviews provide a more in-depth, integrated, and comprehensive analysis of existing literature on a specific topic. The key differences are as follows: 

References 

• Denney, A. S., & Tewksbury, R. (2013). How to write a literature review.  Journal of criminal justice education ,  24 (2), 218-234. 
• Pan, M. L. (2016).  Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches . Taylor & Francis. 
• Cantero, C. (2019). How to write a literature review.  San José State University Writing Center . 

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How to Write a Literature Review

What is a literature review? Written in essay style, a literature review (Lit Review) describes, classifies, and evaluates the sources of information published on a given topic. A Lit Review is not just a list of books/articles.  It’s a review of a collection of research published by accredited scholars and researchers that is relevant to a research question. “Non-scholarly” sources, i.e., those you don’t want to reference, include but are not limited to magazines, newspapers, web sites, and non-published material. The Lit Review does not have to be exhaustive; the objective is not to list as many relevant books, articles, and reports as possible. The idea of the Lit Review is not to provide a summary of all the published work that relates to your research, but a survey (summary and evaluation) of the most relevant and significant work. A Lit Review is a critical look at the existing research that is significant to the work you are carrying out. It’s not just a summary. While you do need to summarize your relevant research, you must also: •    evaluate this work, •    show the relationships between different works, and •    demonstrate how it relates to your work. A Lit Review is about the existing literature on your subject and provides background for your own research findings or commentary. How much sense does your research make if you don’t provide background to the reader about past research conducted by others?

What is the value of a literature review? A Lit Review provides your reader with a survey of the professional publications available on your topic. It demonstrates that you have not only thoroughly researched your topic but also carefully examined and critically evaluated the range of relevant sources. In writing the Lit Review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic and what their strengths and weaknesses are. A Lit Review: •  places the paper within the context of known research on the subject; focuses one’s own research topic. •  provides thorough knowledge of previous studies; introduces seminal works. •  indicates timely nature of one’s research, if applicable. •  suggests previously unused or underused methodologies, designs, quantitative, and qualitative strategies. •  identifies gaps in previous studies; identifies flawed methodologies and/or theoretical approaches; avoids replication of mistakes. •  identifies possible trends or patterns in the literature. •  helps the researcher avoid repetition of earlier research. •  determines whether past studies agree or disagree; identifies controversy in the literature. •  tests assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias.

What is the “literature” in a literature review? The “literature” is the collection of books and journal articles, government documents, and other scholarly works you found to be relevant to your research topic. •    Journal articles: An excellent source for a Lit Review. These are good especially for up-to-date information. They are frequently used in Lit Reviews because they offer a relatively concise, up-to-date format for research, and because all reputable journals are refereed or peer-reviewed, i.e., editors publish only the most relevant and reliable research that has been reviewed by other experts in the field. •    Books:  Generally, a good source for a Lit Review. Books tend to be less up-to-date as it takes longer for a book to be published than for a journal article. Textbooks are unlikely to be useful for including in your Lit Review as they are intended for teaching, not for research, but they do offer a good starting point from which to find better, more detailed sources. •    Conference proceedings: A good source for a Lit Review. These can be useful in providing the latest research or research that has not been published. They are also helpful in providing information on which people are currently involved in which research areas, and so can be helpful in tracking down other work by the same researchers. •    Government/corporate reports: A good source for a Lit Review. Many government departments and corporations commission or carry out research. Their published findings can provide a useful source of information, depending on your field of study. •    Newspapers: Not a good source for a Lit Review. Since newspapers are generally intended for a general (not specialized) audience, the information they provide will be of no use for your Lit Review. Journalists are generally not scholars, i.e., experts on the topic on which they are writing, and thus newspaper articles are not scholarly sources. •    Theses and dissertations: Can be a good source for a Lit Review. These can be useful sources of information. However there are disadvantages: 1) they can be difficult to obtain since they are not always published but are generally only available from the library shelf or through interlibrary loan; 2) the student who carried out the research may not be an experienced researcher and therefore you might have to treat their findings with more caution than published research. Note: Some dissertations are available from the DuBois Library databases. •    Web sites: Never a good source for a Lit Review. The fastest-growing source of information is on the Internet. It is impossible to characterize the information available but here are some hints about using electronic sources: 1) bear in mind that anyone can post information on the Internet so the quality may not be reliable, and 2) the information you find may be intended for a general audience and so may not be suitable for inclusion in your Lit Review (information for a general audience is usually less detailed and less scholarly). Note: This section does not refer to scholarly articles located on the DuBois Library databases. Databases are not web sites. •    Magazines: Not a good source for a Lit Review. Magazines intended for a general audience, e.g., Time, Us, National Enquirer, will not be useful in providing the sort of information you need. Specialized magazines may be more useful (for example business magazines for management students), but usually magazines are not useful for your research except as a starting point by providing news or general information about new discoveries, policies, etc. that you can further research in more specialized sources. How is a literature review different from an annotated bibliography? A Lit Review is written in the style of an expository essay; it has an introduction, body, and conclusion, and it is organized around a controlling idea or thesis. Compare this to an annotated Works Cited list, which is simply an alphabetized list of sources accompanied by summaries and evaluations (annotations). While a single source appears just once in an annotated Works Cited list, it may be referred to numerous times in a Lit Review, depending upon its importance in the field or relationship to other sources. Finally, a Lit Review includes its own in-text citations and Works Cited list.

How is a literature review different from a traditional research paper? A Lit Review may stand alone as a self-contained unit or be part of a research paper (such as a chapter in an honors thesis). Whereas the main body of a research paper focuses on the subject of your research, the Lit Review focuses on your sources. Put another way, in the research paper you use expert sources to support the discussion of your thesis; in a Lit Review, you discuss the sources themselves.

What are the characteristics of a literature review? Among the characteristics you should expect to see in any Lit Review are these: •    A Lit Review MUST have a Works Cited list that includes all references cited in the Lit Review. Do not list sources in the Works Cited list that are not directly cited in the Lit Review. •    A Lit Review is organized by subtopic, NOT by individual source. In a typical Lit Review, you may cite several references in the same paragraph and may cite the same reference in more than one paragraph if that source addresses more than one of the subtopics in the Lit Review. •    Typically, discussion of each source is quite brief. The contribution you make is organizing the ideas from the sources into a cogent argument or narrative that includes your perspectives. •    You should focus on citing the material that originates with each reference. This may require a careful reading of the reference. If the reference author refers to another source whose ideas are relevant or interesting, you are better off tracking down and using that reference. Citing a source that you haven’t read directly is called “grandfathering,” and it is not permitted. Never cite a source you haven’t read.

How is a literature review structured? The Lit Review is not just a descriptive list of the material available or a set of summaries. Demonstrate that you gained a thorough knowledge of the subject area being studied. A Lit Review should NOT be organized as a narrative of your own research process. A Lit Review that says essentially “First I found this source, then I found this one ….” is NOT acceptable. Therefore, like any expository essay, a Lit Review should have an introduction, body, and conclusion: The introduction should contain your research question (thesis statement), an explanation of its significance, and any other background information setting the context of your research. The body paragraphs contain your summative, comparative, and evaluative comments on the sources you’ve found. These comments may pertain to: •    historical background & early research findings •    recent developments •    areas of controversy among experts •    areas of agreement •    dominant views or leading authorities •    varying approaches to or perspectives on the subject •    qualitative comparisons and evaluations The conclusion summarizes major issues in the literature; it also establishes where your own research fits in and what directions you see for future research.

How is a literature review organized? While covering the range of matters listed above, a Lit Review—like any expository essay—should still have a single organizing principle expressed in a thesis statement. Examples of some common ones are these: •    Chronological — Use this organization if developments over time are important to explain the context of your research problem. Otherwise, using a chronological system is not the best way to organize your work. •    Thematic — Depending on your topic, you could organize your Lit Review by time, geographic location, gender, nationality, or another appropriate theme. •    Methodological — What approaches have researchers taken in studying the issue you’re researching? Is your topic suited best for library research or field research? •    Qualitative — Is there a great deal of difference in the quality of research conducted on your topic?

What are some strategies for writing a good literature review? The process of writing a Lit Review typically involves a number of steps. These should include the following: •    Deciding on a relatively focused topic or question. •    Searching for relevant and relatively current literature (books, journal articles, etc. – the mix of these depends on your topic or thesis statement). It is important to locate and comment on the most important works in your chosen field. Failure to include such works might be considered a major failing of your review. The more you research and read, the more you become aware of names that are mentioned repeatedly as influential and even seminal authorities. •    Reading the materials you have found and noting how they approach your topic or question: It isn’t necessary to read every word of a book to learn what an author says about a particular subject. Peruse the index. Skim through the book or article. A quick read through the introduction or the conclusion gives a gist of the book’s or article’s thesis, general points, or argument. Begin with the most recent studies and work backwards. A recent article’s list of references or bibliography might provide you with valuable works to consult. •    Preparing a working outline for your Lit Review and grouping notes from your references in the appropriate section of your outline: Use note cards with citations and annotations, photocopied articles with points highlighted and notes in the margins, or whatever methods helps you keep your information organized. •    Take good notes: Don’t trust your memory. Record all research. Write out the complete bibliographic citation for each work. Record the page number too, because you’ll need it for your in-text citations. (Unless you are citing an entire book or journal article, the in-text citation must include a page number or it’s considered incomplete/inaccurate.) Write direct quotations word for word. Use quotation marks, so it can be recognized as a direct quote. Avoid using too many direct quotations. Take down the substance of the author’s ideas in your own words (paraphrase). IMPORTANT: Most of the review should be primarily in your own words with appropriate documentation of other’s ideas. Don’t take too many notes from a single source or two. Use a wide range of sources. •    Evaluating the information: After reading a lot of material, researchers must carefully evaluate it and decide what should be included in the literature review. Obviously researchers must be objective. Keep an open mind and look at a topic from different vantage points. Determine the objectivity of the material. Who funded the research studies? Who actually performed the research? For a contentious topic, present as equally as possible opposing positions. Be objective. Don’t overemphasize one side. •    Writing and revising the narrative: Keep your audience in mind as your write. Keep your paragraphs short and use subheadings to clarify the structure. Subheadings break the material into readable units. A Lit Review must be organized around and directly related to the thesis or research question you are developing. It must identify areas of controversy in the literature and formulate questions that need further research.

Some traps to avoid: •    Trying to read everything! As you might already have discovered, if you try to be comprehensive you will never be able to finish the reading! The Lit Review does not have to be exhaustive; the objective is not to list as many books, articles, and reports as possible. The idea of the Lit Review is not to provide a summary of all the published work that relates to your research, but a survey of the most relevant and significant work. The Lit Review should contain the most pertinent related studies and show an awareness of important past research and practices and promising current research and practices in the field. •    Reading but not writing! It’s easier to read than to write: given the choice, most of us would rather sit down with a cup of coffee and read yet another article instead of putting ourselves in front of the computer to write about what we have already read! Writing takes much more effort, doesn’t it? However, writing can help you to understand and find relationships between the works you’ve read, so don’t put writing off until you’ve “finished” reading – after all, you will probably still be doing some reading all the way through to the end of your research project. Also, don’t think of what you first write as being the final or near-final version. Writing is a way of thinking, so allow yourself to write as many drafts as you need, changing your ideas and information as you learn more about the context of your research problem. •    Not keeping bibliographic information! The moment will come when you have to write your Works Cited list . . . and then you realize you have forgotten to keep the information you need, and that you never got around to putting references into your work. The only solution is to spend a lot of time in the library tracking down all those sources that you read and going through your writing to find which information came from which source. To avoid this nightmare, always keep this information in your notes. Always put references into your writing.

Literature Review - what is a Literature Review, why it is important and how it is done

What are literature reviews, goals of literature reviews, types of literature reviews, about this guide/licence.

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 What is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries. " - Quote from Taylor, D. (n.d) "The literature review: A few tips on conducting it"

Source NC State University Libraries. This video is published under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA US license.

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

- Baumeister, R.F. & Leary, M.R. (1997). "Writing narrative literature reviews," Review of General Psychology , 1(3), 311-320.

When do you need to write a Literature Review?

• When writing a prospectus or a thesis/dissertation
• When writing a research paper
• When writing a grant proposal

In all these cases you need to dedicate a chapter in these works to showcase what have been written about your research topic and to point out how your own research will shed a new light into these body of scholarship.

Literature reviews are also written as standalone articles as a way to survey a particular research topic in-depth. This type of literature reviews look at a topic from a historical perspective to see how the understanding of the topic have change through time.

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

• Narrative Review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.
• Book review essays/ Historiographical review essays : This is a type of review that focus on a small set of research books on a particular topic " to locate these books within current scholarship, critical methodologies, and approaches" in the field. - LARR
• Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L.K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . San Diego, CA: Plural Publishing.
• Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M.C. & Ilardi, S.S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
• Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). "Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts," Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53(3), 311-318.

Guide adapted from "Literature Review" , a guide developed by Marisol Ramos used under CC BY 4.0 /modified from original.

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How to Write a Literature Review

What is a literature review.

• What Is the Literature
• Writing the Review

A literature review is much more than an annotated bibliography or a list of separate reviews of articles and books. It is a critical, analytical summary and synthesis of the current knowledge of a topic. Thus it should compare and relate different theories, findings, etc, rather than just summarize them individually. In addition, it should have a particular focus or theme to organize the review. It does not have to be an exhaustive account of everything published on the topic, but it should discuss all the significant academic literature and other relevant sources important for that focus.

This is meant to be a general guide to writing a literature review: ways to structure one, what to include, how it supplements other research. For more specific help on writing a review, and especially for help on finding the literature to review, sign up for a Personal Research Session .

The specific organization of a literature review depends on the type and purpose of the review, as well as on the specific field or topic being reviewed. But in general, it is a relatively brief but thorough exploration of past and current work on a topic. Rather than a chronological listing of previous work, though, literature reviews are usually organized thematically, such as different theoretical approaches, methodologies, or specific issues or concepts involved in the topic. A thematic organization makes it much easier to examine contrasting perspectives, theoretical approaches, methodologies, findings, etc, and to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of, and point out any gaps in, previous research. And this is the heart of what a literature review is about. A literature review may offer new interpretations, theoretical approaches, or other ideas; if it is part of a research proposal or report it should demonstrate the relationship of the proposed or reported research to others' work; but whatever else it does, it must provide a critical overview of the current state of research efforts. 

Literature reviews are common and very important in the sciences and social sciences. They are less common and have a less important role in the humanities, but they do have a place, especially stand-alone reviews.

Types of Literature Reviews

There are different types of literature reviews, and different purposes for writing a review, but the most common are:

• Stand-alone literature review articles . These provide an overview and analysis of the current state of research on a topic or question. The goal is to evaluate and compare previous research on a topic to provide an analysis of what is currently known, and also to reveal controversies, weaknesses, and gaps in current work, thus pointing to directions for future research. You can find examples published in any number of academic journals, but there is a series of Annual Reviews of *Subject* which are specifically devoted to literature review articles. Writing a stand-alone review is often an effective way to get a good handle on a topic and to develop ideas for your own research program. For example, contrasting theoretical approaches or conflicting interpretations of findings can be the basis of your research project: can you find evidence supporting one interpretation against another, or can you propose an alternative interpretation that overcomes their limitations?
• Part of a research proposal . This could be a proposal for a PhD dissertation, a senior thesis, or a class project. It could also be a submission for a grant. The literature review, by pointing out the current issues and questions concerning a topic, is a crucial part of demonstrating how your proposed research will contribute to the field, and thus of convincing your thesis committee to allow you to pursue the topic of your interest or a funding agency to pay for your research efforts.
• Part of a research report . When you finish your research and write your thesis or paper to present your findings, it should include a literature review to provide the context to which your work is a contribution. Your report, in addition to detailing the methods, results, etc. of your research, should show how your work relates to others' work.

A literature review for a research report is often a revision of the review for a research proposal, which can be a revision of a stand-alone review. Each revision should be a fairly extensive revision. With the increased knowledge of and experience in the topic as you proceed, your understanding of the topic will increase. Thus, you will be in a better position to analyze and critique the literature. In addition, your focus will change as you proceed in your research. Some areas of the literature you initially reviewed will be marginal or irrelevant for your eventual research, and you will need to explore other areas more thoroughly. 

Examples of Literature Reviews

See the series of Annual Reviews of *Subject* which are specifically devoted to literature review articles to find many examples of stand-alone literature reviews in the biomedical, physical, and social sciences. 

Research report articles vary in how they are organized, but a common general structure is to have sections such as:

• Abstract - Brief summary of the contents of the article
• Introduction - A explanation of the purpose of the study, a statement of the research question(s) the study intends to address
• Literature review - A critical assessment of the work done so far on this topic, to show how the current study relates to what has already been done
• Methods - How the study was carried out (e.g. instruments or equipment, procedures, methods to gather and analyze data)
• Results - What was found in the course of the study
• Discussion - What do the results mean
• Conclusion - State the conclusions and implications of the results, and discuss how it relates to the work reviewed in the literature review; also, point to directions for further work in the area

Here are some articles that illustrate variations on this theme. There is no need to read the entire articles (unless the contents interest you); just quickly browse through to see the sections, and see how each section is introduced and what is contained in them.

The Determinants of Undergraduate Grade Point Average: The Relative Importance of Family Background, High School Resources, and Peer Group Effects , in The Journal of Human Resources , v. 34 no. 2 (Spring 1999), p. 268-293.

This article has a standard breakdown of sections:

• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Some discussion sections

First Encounters of the Bureaucratic Kind: Early Freshman Experiences with a Campus Bureaucracy , in The Journal of Higher Education , v. 67 no. 6 (Nov-Dec 1996), p. 660-691.

This one does not have a section specifically labeled as a "literature review" or "review of the literature," but the first few sections cite a long list of other sources discussing previous research in the area before the authors present their own study they are reporting.

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How To Write A Literature Review - A Complete Guide

Table of Contents

A literature review is much more than just another section in your research paper. It forms the very foundation of your research. It is a formal piece of writing where you analyze the existing theoretical framework, principles, and assumptions and use that as a base to shape your approach to the research question.

Curating and drafting a solid literature review section not only lends more credibility to your research paper but also makes your research tighter and better focused. But, writing literature reviews is a difficult task. It requires extensive reading, plus you have to consider market trends and technological and political changes, which tend to change in the blink of an eye.

Now streamline your literature review process with the help of SciSpace Copilot. With this AI research assistant, you can efficiently synthesize and analyze a vast amount of information, identify key themes and trends, and uncover gaps in the existing research. Get real-time explanations, summaries, and answers to your questions for the paper you're reviewing, making navigating and understanding the complex literature landscape easier.

In this comprehensive guide, we will explore everything from the definition of a literature review, its appropriate length, various types of literature reviews, and how to write one.

What is a literature review?

A literature review is a collation of survey, research, critical evaluation, and assessment of the existing literature in a preferred domain.

Eminent researcher and academic Arlene Fink, in her book Conducting Research Literature Reviews , defines it as the following:

“A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated.

Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic, and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.”

Simply put, a literature review can be defined as a critical discussion of relevant pre-existing research around your research question and carving out a definitive place for your study in the existing body of knowledge. Literature reviews can be presented in multiple ways: a section of an article, the whole research paper itself, or a chapter of your thesis.

A literature review does function as a summary of sources, but it also allows you to analyze further, interpret, and examine the stated theories, methods, viewpoints, and, of course, the gaps in the existing content.

As an author, you can discuss and interpret the research question and its various aspects and debate your adopted methods to support the claim.

What is the purpose of a literature review?

A literature review is meant to help your readers understand the relevance of your research question and where it fits within the existing body of knowledge. As a researcher, you should use it to set the context, build your argument, and establish the need for your study.

What is the importance of a literature review?

The literature review is a critical part of research papers because it helps you:

• Gain an in-depth understanding of your research question and the surrounding area
• Convey that you have a thorough understanding of your research area and are up-to-date with the latest changes and advancements
• Establish how your research is connected or builds on the existing body of knowledge and how it could contribute to further research
• Elaborate on the validity and suitability of your theoretical framework and research methodology
• Identify and highlight gaps and shortcomings in the existing body of knowledge and how things need to change
• Convey to readers how your study is different or how it contributes to the research area

How long should a literature review be?

Ideally, the literature review should take up 15%-40% of the total length of your manuscript. So, if you have a 10,000-word research paper, the minimum word count could be 1500.

Your literature review format depends heavily on the kind of manuscript you are writing — an entire chapter in case of doctoral theses, a part of the introductory section in a research article, to a full-fledged review article that examines the previously published research on a topic.

Another determining factor is the type of research you are doing. The literature review section tends to be longer for secondary research projects than primary research projects.

What are the different types of literature reviews?

All literature reviews are not the same. There are a variety of possible approaches that you can take. It all depends on the type of research you are pursuing.

Here are the different types of literature reviews:

Argumentative review

It is called an argumentative review when you carefully present literature that only supports or counters a specific argument or premise to establish a viewpoint.

Integrative review

It is a type of literature review focused on building a comprehensive understanding of a topic by combining available theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence.

Methodological review

This approach delves into the ''how'' and the ''what" of the research question —  you cannot look at the outcome in isolation; you should also review the methodology used.

Systematic review

This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research and collect, report, and analyze data from the studies included in the review.

Meta-analysis review

Meta-analysis uses statistical methods to summarize the results of independent studies. By combining information from all relevant studies, meta-analysis can provide more precise estimates of the effects than those derived from the individual studies included within a review.

Historical review

Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, or phenomenon emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and identify future research's likely directions.

Theoretical Review

This form aims to examine the corpus of theory accumulated regarding an issue, concept, theory, and phenomenon. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories exist, the relationships between them, the degree the existing approaches have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested.

Scoping Review

The Scoping Review is often used at the beginning of an article, dissertation, or research proposal. It is conducted before the research to highlight gaps in the existing body of knowledge and explains why the project should be greenlit.

State-of-the-Art Review

The State-of-the-Art review is conducted periodically, focusing on the most recent research. It describes what is currently known, understood, or agreed upon regarding the research topic and highlights where there are still disagreements.

Can you use the first person in a literature review?

When writing literature reviews, you should avoid the usage of first-person pronouns. It means that instead of "I argue that" or "we argue that," the appropriate expression would be "this research paper argues that."

Do you need an abstract for a literature review?

Ideally, yes. It is always good to have a condensed summary that is self-contained and independent of the rest of your review. As for how to draft one, you can follow the same fundamental idea when preparing an abstract for a literature review. It should also include:

• The research topic and your motivation behind selecting it
• A one-sentence thesis statement
• An explanation of the kinds of literature featured in the review
• Summary of what you've learned
• Conclusions you drew from the literature you reviewed
• Potential implications and future scope for research

Here's an example of the abstract of a literature review

Is a literature review written in the past tense?

Yes, the literature review should ideally be written in the past tense. You should not use the present or future tense when writing one. The exceptions are when you have statements describing events that happened earlier than the literature you are reviewing or events that are currently occurring; then, you can use the past perfect or present perfect tenses.

How many sources for a literature review?

There are multiple approaches to deciding how many sources to include in a literature review section. The first approach would be to look level you are at as a researcher. For instance, a doctoral thesis might need 60+ sources. In contrast, you might only need to refer to 5-15 sources at the undergraduate level.

The second approach is based on the kind of literature review you are doing — whether it is merely a chapter of your paper or if it is a self-contained paper in itself. When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. In the second scenario, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.

Quick tips on how to write a literature review

To know how to write a literature review, you must clearly understand its impact and role in establishing your work as substantive research material.

You need to follow the below-mentioned steps, to write a literature review:

• Outline the purpose behind the literature review
• Search relevant literature
• Examine and assess the relevant resources
• Discover connections by drawing deep insights from the resources
• Structure planning to write a good literature review

1. Outline and identify the purpose of  a literature review

As a first step on how to write a literature review, you must know what the research question or topic is and what shape you want your literature review to take. Ensure you understand the research topic inside out, or else seek clarifications. You must be able to the answer below questions before you start:

• How many sources do I need to include?
• What kind of sources should I analyze?
• How much should I critically evaluate each source?
• Should I summarize, synthesize or offer a critique of the sources?
• Do I need to include any background information or definitions?

Additionally, you should know that the narrower your research topic is, the swifter it will be for you to restrict the number of sources to be analyzed.

2. Search relevant literature

Dig deeper into search engines to discover what has already been published around your chosen topic. Make sure you thoroughly go through appropriate reference sources like books, reports, journal articles, government docs, and web-based resources.

You must prepare a list of keywords and their different variations. You can start your search from any library’s catalog, provided you are an active member of that institution. The exact keywords can be extended to widen your research over other databases and academic search engines like:

• Google Scholar
• Microsoft Academic
• Science.gov

Besides, it is not advisable to go through every resource word by word. Alternatively, what you can do is you can start by reading the abstract and then decide whether that source is relevant to your research or not.

Additionally, you must spend surplus time assessing the quality and relevance of resources. It would help if you tried preparing a list of citations to ensure that there lies no repetition of authors, publications, or articles in the literature review.

3. Examine and assess the sources

It is nearly impossible for you to go through every detail in the research article. So rather than trying to fetch every detail, you have to analyze and decide which research sources resemble closest and appear relevant to your chosen domain.

While analyzing the sources, you should look to find out answers to questions like:

• What question or problem has the author been describing and debating?
• What is the definition of critical aspects?
• How well the theories, approach, and methodology have been explained?
• Whether the research theory used some conventional or new innovative approach?
• How relevant are the key findings of the work?
• In what ways does it relate to other sources on the same topic?
• What challenges does this research paper pose to the existing theory
• What are the possible contributions or benefits it adds to the subject domain?

Be always mindful that you refer only to credible and authentic resources. It would be best if you always take references from different publications to validate your theory.

Always keep track of important information or data you can present in your literature review right from the beginning. It will help steer your path from any threats of plagiarism and also make it easier to curate an annotated bibliography or reference section.

4. Discover connections

At this stage, you must start deciding on the argument and structure of your literature review. To accomplish this, you must discover and identify the relations and connections between various resources while drafting your abstract.

A few aspects that you should be aware of while writing a literature review include:

• Rise to prominence: Theories and methods that have gained reputation and supporters over time.
• Constant scrutiny: Concepts or theories that repeatedly went under examination.
• Contradictions and conflicts: Theories, both the supporting and the contradictory ones, for the research topic.
• Knowledge gaps: What exactly does it fail to address, and how to bridge them with further research?
• Influential resources: Significant research projects available that have been upheld as milestones or perhaps, something that can modify the current trends

Once you join the dots between various past research works, it will be easier for you to draw a conclusion and identify your contribution to the existing knowledge base.

5. Structure planning to write a good literature review

There exist different ways towards planning and executing the structure of a literature review. The format of a literature review varies and depends upon the length of the research.

Like any other research paper, the literature review format must contain three sections: introduction, body, and conclusion. The goals and objectives of the research question determine what goes inside these three sections.

Nevertheless, a good literature review can be structured according to the chronological, thematic, methodological, or theoretical framework approach.

Literature review samples

1. Standalone

2. As a section of a research paper

How SciSpace Discover makes literature review a breeze?

SciSpace Discover is a one-stop solution to do an effective literature search and get barrier-free access to scientific knowledge. It is an excellent repository where you can find millions of only peer-reviewed articles and full-text PDF files. Here’s more on how you can use it:

Find the right information

Find what you want quickly and easily with comprehensive search filters that let you narrow down papers according to PDF availability, year of publishing, document type, and affiliated institution. Moreover, you can sort the results based on the publishing date, citation count, and relevance.

Assess credibility of papers quickly

When doing the literature review, it is critical to establish the quality of your sources. They form the foundation of your research. SciSpace Discover helps you assess the quality of a source by providing an overview of its references, citations, and performance metrics.

Get the complete picture in no time

SciSpace Discover’s personalized suggestion engine helps you stay on course and get the complete picture of the topic from one place. Every time you visit an article page, it provides you links to related papers. Besides that, it helps you understand what’s trending, who are the top authors, and who are the leading publishers on a topic.

Make referring sources super easy

To ensure you don't lose track of your sources, you must start noting down your references when doing the literature review. SciSpace Discover makes this step effortless. Click the 'cite' button on an article page, and you will receive preloaded citation text in multiple styles — all you've to do is copy-paste it into your manuscript.

Final tips on how to write a literature review

A massive chunk of time and effort is required to write a good literature review. But, if you go about it systematically, you'll be able to save a ton of time and build a solid foundation for your research.

We hope this guide has helped you answer several key questions you have about writing literature reviews.

Would you like to explore SciSpace Discover and kick off your literature search right away? You can get started here .

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. how to start a literature review.

• What questions do you want to answer?

• What sources do you need to answer these questions?

• What information do these sources contain?

• How can you use this information to answer your questions?

2. What to include in a literature review?

• A brief background of the problem or issue

• What has previously been done to address the problem or issue

• A description of what you will do in your project

• How this study will contribute to research on the subject

3. Why literature review is important?

The literature review is an important part of any research project because it allows the writer to look at previous studies on a topic and determine existing gaps in the literature, as well as what has already been done. It will also help them to choose the most appropriate method for their own study.

4. How to cite a literature review in APA format?

To cite a literature review in APA style, you need to provide the author's name, the title of the article, and the year of publication. For example: Patel, A. B., & Stokes, G. S. (2012). The relationship between personality and intelligence: A meta-analysis of longitudinal research. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(1), 16-21

5. What are the components of a literature review?

• A brief introduction to the topic, including its background and context. The introduction should also include a rationale for why the study is being conducted and what it will accomplish.

• A description of the methodologies used in the study. This can include information about data collection methods, sample size, and statistical analyses.

• A presentation of the findings in an organized format that helps readers follow along with the author's conclusions.

6. What are common errors in writing literature review?

• Not spending enough time to critically evaluate the relevance of resources, observations and conclusions.

• Totally relying on secondary data while ignoring primary data.

• Letting your personal bias seep into your interpretation of existing literature.

• No detailed explanation of the procedure to discover and identify an appropriate literature review.

7. What are the 5 C's of writing literature review?

• Cite - the sources you utilized and referenced in your research.

• Compare - existing arguments, hypotheses, methodologies, and conclusions found in the knowledge base.

• Contrast - the arguments, topics, methodologies, approaches, and disputes that may be found in the literature.

• Critique - the literature and describe the ideas and opinions you find more convincing and why.

• Connect - the various studies you reviewed in your research.

8. How many sources should a literature review have?

When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. if it is a self-contained paper in itself, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.

9. Can literature review have diagrams?

• To represent an abstract idea or concept

• To explain the steps of a process or procedure

• To help readers understand the relationships between different concepts

10. How old should sources be in a literature review?

Sources for a literature review should be as current as possible or not older than ten years. The only exception to this rule is if you are reviewing a historical topic and need to use older sources.

11. What are the types of literature review?

• Argumentative review

• Integrative review

• Methodological review

• Systematic review

• Meta-analysis review

• Historical review

• Theoretical review

• Scoping review

• State-of-the-Art review

12. Is a literature review mandatory?

Yes. Literature review is a mandatory part of any research project. It is a critical step in the process that allows you to establish the scope of your research, and provide a background for the rest of your work.

But before you go,

• Six Online Tools for Easy Literature Review
• Evaluating literature review: systematic vs. scoping reviews
• Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review
• Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples

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Consensus GPT vs. SciSpace GPT: Choose the Best GPT for Research

Literature Review and Theoretical Framework: Understanding the Differences

Types of Essays in Academic Writing - Quick Guide (2024)

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Introduction to Literature Reviews

Introduction.

• Step One: Define
• Step Two: Research
• Step Three: Write
• Suggested Readings

A literature review is a written work that :

• Compiles significant research published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers;
• Surveys scholarly articles, books, dissertations, conference proceedings, and other sources;
• Examines contrasting perspectives, theoretical approaches, methodologies, findings, results, conclusions.
• Reviews critically, analyzes, and synthesizes existing research on a topic; and,
• Performs a thorough “re” view, “overview”, or “look again” of past and current works on a subject, issue, or theory.

From these analyses, the writer then offers an overview of the current status of a particular area of knowledge from both a practical and theoretical perspective.

Literature reviews are important because they are usually a  required  step in a thesis proposal (Master's or PhD). The proposal will not be well-supported without a literature review. Also, literature reviews are important because they help you learn important authors and ideas in your field. This is useful for your coursework and your writing. Knowing key authors also helps you become acquainted with other researchers in your field.

Look at this diagram and imagine that your research is the "something new." This shows how your research should relate to major works and other sources.

Olivia Whitfield | Graduate Reference Assistant | 2012-2015

• Next: Step One: Define >>
• Last Updated: Aug 29, 2024 1:55 PM
• URL: https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/literaturereview

• UConn Library
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

• Getting Started
• How to Pick a Topic
• Strategies to Find Sources
• Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
• Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
• Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
• Citation Resources
• Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D.  The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?  A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews .  Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

• A research paper assigned in a course
• A thesis or dissertation
• A grant proposal
• An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

• Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework:  10.1177/08948453211037398  

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

• Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review:  10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

• Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis:  10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts .  Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

• Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis:  10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

• UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
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• Next: How to Pick a Topic >>
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Workshop: Literature Reviews- What you need to know

• How to write a literature review

Useful Titles for All of your Boxes

The Seven Steps to Producing a Literature Review:

1. Identify your question

2. Review discipline style

3. Search the literature

4. Manage your references

5. Critically analyze and evaluate

6. Synthisize

7. Write the review

• University of North Carolina Writing Center "How To" UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center "How To" on writing a literature review.
• Purdue Owl Purdue Owl help on writing a literature review

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How to Write a Literature Review

• Where to Search
• Search Strategies This link opens in a new window
• Further Reading

Donna Miller

Thank You...

The content of this site has been borrowed from a LibGuide created by the University of Melbourne Library and the University of Newcastle. We are grateful for their permission to reuse their content.

What is a Literature Review?

The purpose of a literature review is to show "that the writer has studied existing work in the field with insight" (Haywood and Wragg, 1982).  An effective literature review analyzes and synthesizes material.  Literature reviews synthesize the work of others with insight and criticism, and should meet the following requirements (Caulley, 1992):

• Compare and contrast different authors' views,
• Group authors who draw similar conclusions,
• Criticize aspects of methodology,
• Note areas of disagreement,
• Highlight exemplary studies,
• Identify patterns or trends in the literature,
• Note gaps or omissions in previous research,
• Point out unanswered questions,
• Show how your hypothesis/research relates to previous studies,
• Show how your hypothesis/research relates to the literature in general,
• Conclude by summarizing what the literature says.

A literature review has a number of purposes. It enables you to :

• Clarify your research topic,
• Identify experts and important published works.
• Place your research into a historical perspective,
• Avoid unnecessary duplication,
• Evaluate promising research methods,
• Relate your findings to previous knowledge and suggest further research.

Most students are not experts in their chosen field. Literature reviews enable one to develop a good working knowledge of the research in a particular area. Literature reviews raise questions, identify areas to be explored, summarize and criticize research, and prepare the reader for the study--your research--that is to follow .

• Establish your research question; organize your literature into topics around the question.
• Begin the literature review with an introduction to the topic. What is its significance and importance?
• Critically analyze the relevant literature; state the content of the literature, implications of this knowledge, and any gaps,deficiencies, inconsistencies or conflicting viewpoints.
• Write a critical and evaluative review of the literature; make your own interpretations.
• Draw together important points in the conclusion; show how the information answers the question.
• Establish if more research is needed, especially if there are inconsistencies or conflicting points of view.
• Avoid plagiarism - acknowledge sources of ideas and quotations to add authority and credibility to the work.
• Next: Search the Literature >>
• Last Updated: Jun 26, 2024 7:54 AM
• URL: https://libguides.lvc.edu/literaturereview

Libraries | Research Guides

Literature reviews, what is a literature review, learning more about how to do a literature review.

• Planning the Review
• The Research Question
• Choosing Where to Search
• Organizing the Review
• Writing the Review

A literature review is a review and synthesis of existing research on a topic or research question. A literature review is meant to analyze the scholarly literature, make connections across writings and identify strengths, weaknesses, trends, and missing conversations. A literature review should address different aspects of a topic as it relates to your research question. A literature review goes beyond a description or summary of the literature you have read. 

• Sage Research Methods Core This link opens in a new window SAGE Research Methods supports research at all levels by providing material to guide users through every step of the research process. SAGE Research Methods is the ultimate methods library with more than 1000 books, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos by world-leading academics from across the social sciences, including the largest collection of qualitative methods books available online from any scholarly publisher. – Publisher

• Next: Planning the Review >>
• Last Updated: Jul 8, 2024 11:22 AM
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Literature Review Guide

The literature review, database search tips.

• Back to Research Help
• What is a Literature Review?
• Plan Your Literature Review
• Identify a Research Gap
• Define Your Research Question
• Search the Literature
• Analyze Your Research Results
• Manage Research Results
• Write the Literature Review

What is a Literature Review?  What is its purpose?

The purpose of a literature review is to offer a  comprehensive review of scholarly literature on a specific topic along with an  evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of authors' arguments . In other words, you are summarizing research available on a certain topic and then drawing conclusions about researchers' findings. To make gathering research easier, be sure to start with a narrow/specific topic and then widen your topic if necessary.

A thorough literature review provides an accurate description of current knowledge on a topic and identifies areas for future research.  Are there gaps or areas that require further study and exploration? What opportunities are there for further research? What is missing from my collection of resources? Are more resources needed?

It is important to note that conclusions described in the literature you gather may contradict each other completely or in part.  Recognize that knowledge creation is collective and cumulative.  Current research is built upon past research findings and discoveries.  Research may bring previously accepted conclusions into question.  A literature review presents current knowledge on a topic and may point out various academic arguments within the discipline.

What a Literature Review is not

• A literature review is not an annotated bibliography .  An annotated bibliography provides a brief summary, analysis, and reflection of resources included in the bibliography.  Often it is not a systematic review of existing research on a specific subject.  That said, creating an annotated bibliography throughout your research process may be helpful in managing the resources discovered through your research.
• A literature review is not a research paper .  A research paper explores a topic and uses resources discovered through the research process to support a position on the topic.  In other words, research papers present one side of an issue.  A literature review explores all sides of the research topic and evaluates all positions and conclusions achieved through the scientific research process even though some conclusions may conflict partially or completely.

From the Online Library

SAGE Research Methods is a web-based research methods tool that covers quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods. Researchers can explore methods and concepts to help design research projects, understand a particular method or identify a new method, and write up research. Sage Research Methods focuses on methodology rather than disciplines, and is of potential use to researchers from the social sciences, health sciences and other research areas.

• Sage Research Methods Project Planner - Reviewing the Literature View the resources and videos for a step-by-step guide to performing a literature review.

The Literature Review: Step by Step

Follow this step-by-step process by using the related tabs in this Guide.

• Define your Research question
• Analyze the material you’ve found
• Manage the results of your research
• Write your Review

Getting Started

Consider the following questions as you develop your research topic, conduct your research, and begin evaluating the resources discovered in the research process:

• What is known about the subject?
• Are there any gaps in the knowledge of the subject?
• Have areas of further study been identified by other researchers that you may want to consider?
• Who are the significant research personalities in this area?
• Is there consensus about the topic?
• What aspects have generated significant debate on the topic?
• What methods or problems were identified by others studying in the field and how might they impact your research?
• What is the most productive methodology for your research based on the literature you have reviewed?
• What is the current status of research in this area?
• What sources of information or data were identified that might be useful to you?
• How detailed? Will it be a review of ALL relevant material or will the scope be limited to more recent material, e.g., the last five years.
• Are you focusing on methodological approaches; on theoretical issues; on qualitative or quantitative research?

What is Academic Literature?

What is the difference between popular and scholarly literature?

To better understand the differences between popular and scholarly articles, comparing characteristics and purpose of the publications where these articles appear is helpful.

Popular Article (Magazine)

• Articles are shorter and are written for the general public
• General interest topics or current events are covered
• Language is simple and easy to understand
• Source material is not cited
• Articles often include glossy photographs, graphics, or visuals
• Articles are written by the publication's staff of journalists
• Articles are edited and information is fact checked

Examples of magazines that contain popular articles:

Scholarly Article (Academic Journal)

• Articles are written by scholars and researchers for academics, professionals, and experts in the field
• Articles are longer and report original research findings
• Topics are narrower in focus and provide in-depth analysis
• Technical or scholarly language is used
• Source material is cited
• Charts and graphs illustrating research findings are included
• Many are  "peer reviewed"  meaning that panels of experts review articles submitted for publication to ensure that proper research methods were used and research findings are contributing something new to the field before selecting for publication.

Examples of academic journals that contain scholarly articles:

Define your research question

Selecting a research topic can be overwhelming.  Consider following these steps:

1.  Brainstorm  research topic ideas

      - Free write: Set a timer for five minutes and write down as many ideas as you can in the allotted time

      -  Mind-Map  to explore how ideas are related

2.  Prioritize  topics based on personal interest and curiosity

3.  Pre-research

      - Explore encyclopedias and reference books for background information on the topic

      - Perform a quick database or Google search on the topic to explore current issues. 

4.  Focus the topic  by evaluating how much information is available on the topic

         - Too much information?  Consider narrowing the topic by focusing on a specific issue 

         - Too little information?  Consider broadening the topic 

5.  Determine your purpose  by considering whether your research is attempting to:

         - further the research on this topic

         - fill a gap in the research

         - support existing knowledge with new evidence

         - take a new approach or direction

         - question or challenge existing knowledge

6.  Finalize your research question

NOTE:  Be aware that your initial research question may change as you conduct research on your topic.

Searching the Literature

Research on your topic should be conducted in the academic literature.  The  Rasmussen University Online Library contains subject-focused databases that contain the leading academic journals in your programmatic area.

Consult the  Using the Online Library video tutorials  for information about how to effectively search library databases.

Watch the video below for tips on how to create a search statement that will provide relevant results

Need help starting your research?  Make a  research appointment with a Rasmussen Librarian .

TIP:  Document as you research.  Begin building your references list using the citation managers in one of these resources:

• APA Academic Writer
• NoodleTools

Recommended programmatic databases include:

Data Science

Coverage includes computer engineering, computer theory & systems, research and development, and the social and professional implications of new technologies. Articles come from more than 1,900 academic journals, trade magazines, and professional publications.

Provides access to full-text peer-reviewed journals, transactions, magazines, conference proceedings, and published standards in the areas of electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics. It also provides access to the IEEE Standards Dictionary Online. Full-text available.

Computing, telecommunications, art, science and design databases from ProQuest.

Healthcare Management

Articles from scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 with content from all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, accounting, management information systems, production and operations management, finance, and economics. Contains 55 videos from the Harvard Faculty Seminar Series, on topics such as leadership, sustaining competitive advantage, and globalization. To access the videos, click "More" in the blue bar at the top. Select "Images/ Business Videos." Uncheck "Image Quick View Collection" to indicate you only wish to search for videos. Enter search terms.

Provides a truly comprehensive business research collection. The collection consists of the following databases and more: ABI/INFORM Complete, ProQuest Entrepreneurship, ProQuest Accounting & Tax, International Bibliography of Social Sciences (IBSS), ProQuest Asian Business and Reference, and Banking Information Source.

The definitive research tool for all areas of nursing and allied health literature. Geared towards the needs of nurses and medical professionals. Covers more than 750 journals from 1937 to present.

HPRC provides information on the creation, implementation and study of health care policy and the health care system. Topics covered include health care administration, economics, planning, law, quality control, ethics, and more.

PolicyMap is an online mapping site that provides data on demographics, real estate, health, jobs, and other areas across the U.S. Access and visualize data from Census and third-party records.

Human Resources

Articles from all subject areas gathered from more than 11,000 magazines, journals, books and reports. Subjects include astronomy, multicultural studies, humanities, geography, history, law, pharmaceutical sciences, women's studies, and more. Coverage from 1887 to present. Start your research here.

Cochrane gathers and summarizes the best evidence from research to help you make informed choices about treatments. Whether a doctor or nurse, patient, researcher or student, Cochrane evidence provides a tool to enhance your healthcare knowledge and decision making on topics ranging from allergies, blood disorders, and cancer, to mental health, pregnancy, urology, and wounds.

Health sciences, biology, science, and pharmaceutical information from ProQuest. Includes articles from scholarly, peer-reviewed journals, practical and professional development content from professional journals, and general interest articles from magazines and newspapers.

Joanna Briggs Institute Academic Collection contains evidence-based information from across the globe, including evidence summaries, systematic reviews, best practice guidelines, and more. Subjects include medical, nursing, and healthcare specialties.

Comprehensive source of full-text articles from more than 1,450 scholarly medical journals.

Articles from more than 35 nursing journals in full text, searchable as far back as 1995.

Analyzing Your Research Results

You have completed your research and discovered many, many academic articles on your topic.  The next step involves evaluating and organizing the literature found in the research process.

As you review, keep in mind that there are three types of research studies:

• Quantitative
• Qualitative 
• Mixed Methods

Consider these questions as you review the articles you have gathered through the research process:

1. Does the study relate to your topic?

2. Were sound research methods used in conducting the study?

3. Does the research design fit the research question? What variables were chosen? Was the sample size adequate?

4. What conclusions were drawn?  Do the authors point out areas for further research?

Reading Academic Literature

Academic journals publish the results of research studies performed by experts in an academic discipline.  Articles selected for publication go through a rigorous peer-review process.  This process includes a thorough evaluation of the research submitted for publication by journal editors and other experts or peers in the field.  Editors select articles based on specific criteria including the research methods used, whether the research contributes new findings to the field of study, and how the research fits within the scope of the academic journal.  Articles selected often go through a revision process prior to publication.

Most academic journal articles include the following sections:

• Abstract    (An executive summary of the study)
• Introduction  (Definition of the research question to be studied)
• Literature Review  (A summary of past research noting where gaps exist)
• Methods  (The research design including variables, sample size, measurements)
• Data   (Information gathered through the study often displayed in tables and charts)
• Results   (Conclusions reached at the end of the study)
• Conclusion   (Discussion of whether the study proved the thesis; may suggest opportunities for further research)
• Bibliography  (A list of works cited in the journal article)

TIP:  To begin selecting articles for your research, read the   highlighted sections   to determine whether the academic journal article includes information relevant to your research topic.

Step 1: Skim the article

When sorting through multiple articles discovered in the research process, skimming through these sections of the article will help you determine whether the article will be useful in your research.

1.  Article title   and subject headings assigned to the article

2.   Abstract

3.   Introduction

4.  Conclusion

If the article fits your information need, go back and  read the article thoroughly.

TIP:  Create a folder on your computer to save copies of articles you plan to use in your thesis or research project.  Use  NoodleTools  or  APA Academic Writer  to save APA references.

Step 2: Determine Your Purpose

Think about how you will evaluate the academic articles you find and how you will determine whether to include them in your research project.  Ask yourself the following questions to focus your search in the academic literature:

• ​Are you looking for an overview of a topic? an explanation of a specific concept, idea, or position?
• Are you exploring gaps in the research to identify a new area for academic study?
• Are you looking for research that supports or disagrees with your thesis or research question?
• Are you looking for examples of a research design and/or research methods you are considering for your own research project?

Step 3: Read Critically

Before reading the article, ask yourself the following:

• What is my research question?  What position am I trying to support?
• What do I already know about this topic?  What do I need to learn?
• How will I evaluate the article?  Author's reputation? Research design? Treatment of topic? 
• What are my biases about the topic?

As you read the article make note of the following:

• Who is the intended audience for this article?
• What is the author's purpose in writing this article?
• What is the main point?
• How was the main point proven or supported?  
• Were scientific methods used in conducting the research?
• Do you agree or disagree with the author? Why?
• How does this article compare or connect with other articles on the topic?
• Does the author recommend areas for further study?
• How does this article help to answer your research question?

Managing your Research

Tip:  Create APA references for resources as you discover them in the research process

Use APA Academic Writer or NoodleTools to generate citations and manage your resources.  Find information on how to use these resources in the Citation Tools Guide .

Writing the Literature Review

Once research has been completed, it is time to structure the literature review and begin summarizing and synthesizing information.  The following steps may help with this process:

• Chronological
• By research method used
• Explore contradictory or conflicting conclusions
• Read each study critically
• Critique methodology, processes, and conclusions
• Consider how the study relates to your topic

• Description of public health nursing nutrition assessment and interventions for home‐visited women. This article provides a nice review of the literature in the article introduction. You can see how the authors have used the existing literature to make a case for their research questions. more... less... Horning, M. L., Olsen, J. M., Lell, S., Thorson, D. R., & Monsen, K. A. (2018). Description of public health nursing nutrition assessment and interventions for home‐visited women. Public Health Nursing, 35(4), 317–326. https://doi.org/10.1111/phn.12410
• Improving Diabetes Self-Efficacy in the Hispanic Population Through Self-Management Education Doctoral papers are a good place to see how literature reviews can be done. You can learn where they searched, what search terms they used, and how they decided which articles were included. Notice how the literature review is organized around the three main themes that came out of the literature search. more... less... Robles, A. N. (2023). Improving diabetes self-efficacy in the hispanic population through self-management education (Order No. 30635901). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global: The Sciences and Engineering Collection. https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/improving-diabetes-self-efficacy-hispanic/docview/2853708553/se-2
• Exploring mediating effects between nursing leadership and patient safety from a person-centred perspective: A literature review Reading articles that publish the results of a systematic literature review is a great way to see in detail how a literature review is conducted. These articles provide an article matrix, which provides you an example of how you can document information about the articles you find in your own search. To see more examples, include "literature review" or "systematic review" as a search term. more... less... Wang, M., & Dewing, J. (2021). Exploring mediating effects between nursing leadership and patient safety from a person‐centred perspective: A literature review. Journal of Nursing Management, 29(5), 878–889. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.13226
• Boolean Operators
• Keywords vs. Subjects
• Creating a Search String
• Library databases are collections of resources that are searchable, including full-text articles, books, and encyclopedias.
• Searching library databases is different than searching Google. Best results are achieved when using Keywords linked with Boolean Operators . 
• Applying Limiters such as full-text, publication date, resource type, language, geographic location, and subject help to refine search results.
• Utilizing Phrases or Fields , in addition to an awareness of Stop Words , can focus your search and retrieve more useful results.
• Have questions? Ask a Librarian

Boolean Operators connect keywords or concepts logically to retrieve relevant articles, books, and other resources.  There are three Boolean Operators:

Using AND 

• Narrows search results
• Connects two or more keywords/concepts
• All keywords/concepts connected with "and" must be in an article or resource to appear in the search results list

Venn diagram of the AND connector

Example: The result list will include resources that include both keywords -- "distracted driving" and "texting" -- in the same article or resource, represented in the shaded area where the circles intersect (area shaded in purple).

• Broadens search results ("OR means more!")
• Connects two or more synonyms or related keywords/concepts
• Resources appearing in the results list will include any of the terms connected with the OR connector

Venn diagram of the OR connector

Example:  The result list will include resources that include the keyword "texting" OR the keyword "cell phone" (entire area shaded in blue); either is acceptable.

• Excludes keywords or concepts from the search
• Narrows results by removing resources that contain the keyword or term connected with the NOT connector
• Use sparingly

Venn diagram of the NOT connector

Example: The result list will include all resources that include the term "car" (green area) but will exclude any resource that includes the term "motorcycle" (purple area) even though the term car may be present in the resource.

A library database searches for keywords throughout the entire resource record including the full-text of the resource, subject headings, tags, bibliographic information, etc.

• Natural language words or short phrases that describe a concept or idea
• Can retrieve too few or irrelevant results due to full-text searching (What words would an author use to write about this topic?)
• Provide flexibility in a search
• Must consider synonyms or related terms to improve search results
• TIP: Build a Keyword List

Example:  The keyword list above was developed to find resources that discuss how texting while driving results in accidents.  Notice that there are synonyms (texting and "text messaging"), related terms ("cell phones" and texting), and spelling variations ("cell phone" and cellphone).  Using keywords when searching full text requires consideration of various words that express an idea or concept.

• Subject Headings
• Predetermined "controlled vocabulary" database editors apply to resources to describe topical coverage of content
• Can retrieve more precise search results because every article assigned that subject heading will be retrieved.
• Provide less flexibility in a search
• Can be combined with a keyword search to focus search results.
• TIP: Consult database subject heading list or subject headings assigned to relevant resources

Example 1: In EBSCO's Academic Search Complete, clicking on the "Subject Terms" tab provides access to the entire subject heading list used in the database.  It also allows a search for specific subject terms.

Example 2:  A subject term can be incorporated into a keyword search by clicking on the down arrow next to "Select a Field" and selecting "Subject Terms" from the dropdown list.  Also, notice how subject headings are listed below the resource title, providing another strategy for discovering subject headings used in the database.

When a search term is more than one word, enclose the phrase in quotation marks to retrieve more precise and accurate results.  Using quotation marks around a term will search it as a "chunk," searching for those particular words together in that order within the text of a resource. 

"cell phone"

"distracted driving"

"car accident"

TIP: In some databases, neglecting to enclose phrases in quotation marks will insert the AND Boolean connector between each word resulting in unintended search results.

Truncation provides an option to search for a root of a keyword in order to retrieve resources that include variations of that word.  This feature can be used to broaden search results, although some results may not be relevant.  To truncate a keyword, type an asterisk (*) following the root of the word.

For example:

Library databases provide a variety of tools to limit and refine search results.  Limiters provide the ability to limit search results to resources having specified characteristics including:

• Resource type
• Publication date
• Geographic location

In both the EBSCO and ProQuest databases, the limiting tools are located in the left panel of the results page.

                                                 EBSCO                                                     ProQuest

The short video below provides a demonstration of how to use limiters to refine a list of search results.

Each resource in a library database is stored in a record.  In addition to the full-text of the resources, searchable Fields are attached that typically include:

• Journal title
• Date of Publication

Incorporating Fields into your search can assist in focusing and refining search results by limiting the results to those resources that include specific information in a particular field.

In both EBSCO and ProQuest databases, selecting the Advanced Search option will allow Fields to be included in a search.

For example, in the Advanced Search option in EBSCO's Academic Search Complete database, clicking on the down arrow next to "Select a Field" provides a list of fields that can be searched within that database.  Select the field and enter the information in the text box to the left to use this feature.

Stop words are short, commonly used words--articles, prepositions, and pronouns-- that are automatically dropped from a search.  Typical stop words include:

In library databases, a stop word will not be searched even if it is included in a phrase enclosed in quotation marks.  In some instances, a word will be substituted for the stop word to allow for the other words in the phrase to be searched in proximity to one another within the text of the resource.

For example, if you searched company of America, your result list will include these variatons:

• company in America
• company of America
• company for America

Creating an Search String

This short video demonstrates how to create a search string -- keywords connected with Boolean operators -- to use in a library database search to retrieve relevant resources for any research assignment.

• Database Search Menu Template Use this search menu template to plan a database search.
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• Literature Review Guidelines

Making sense of what has been written on your topic.

Goals of a literature review:.

Before doing work in primary sources, historians must know what has been written on their topic.  They must be familiar with theories and arguments–as well as facts–that appear in secondary sources.

Before you proceed with your research project, you too must be familiar with the literature: you do not want to waste time on theories that others have disproved and you want to take full advantage of what others have argued.  You want to be able to discuss and analyze your topic.

Your literature review will demonstrate your familiarity with your topic’s secondary literature.

GUIDELINES FOR A LITERATURE REVIEW:

1) LENGTH:  8-10 pages of text for Senior Theses (485) (consult with your professor for other classes), with either footnotes or endnotes and with a works-consulted bibliography. [See also the  citation guide  on this site.]

2) NUMBER OF WORKS REVIEWED: Depends on the assignment, but for Senior Theses (485), at least ten is typical.

3) CHOOSING WORKS:

Your literature review must include enough works to provide evidence of both the breadth and the depth of the research on your topic or, at least, one important angle of it.  The number of works necessary to do this will depend on your topic. For most topics, AT LEAST TEN works (mostly books but also significant scholarly articles) are necessary, although you will not necessarily give all of them equal treatment in your paper (e.g., some might appear in notes rather than the essay). 4) ORGANIZING/ARRANGING THE LITERATURE:

As you uncover the literature (i.e., secondary writing) on your topic, you should determine how the various pieces relate to each other.  Your ability to do so will demonstrate your understanding of the evolution of literature.

You might determine that the literature makes sense when divided by time period, by methodology, by sources, by discipline, by thematic focus, by race, ethnicity, and/or gender of author, or by political ideology.  This list is not exhaustive.  You might also decide to subdivide categories based on other criteria.  There is no “rule” on divisions—historians wrote the literature without consulting each other and without regard to the goal of fitting into a neat, obvious organization useful to students.

The key step is to FIGURE OUT the most logical, clarifying angle.  Do not arbitrarily choose a categorization; use the one that the literature seems to fall into.  How do you do that?  For every source, you should note its thesis, date, author background, methodology, and sources.  Does a pattern appear when you consider such information from each of your sources?  If so, you have a possible thesis about the literature.  If not, you might still have a thesis.

Consider: Are there missing elements in the literature?  For example, no works published during a particular (usually fairly lengthy) time period?  Or do studies appear after long neglect of a topic?  Do interpretations change at some point?  Does the major methodology being used change?  Do interpretations vary based on sources used?

Follow these links for more help on analyzing  historiography  and  historical perspective .

5) CONTENTS OF LITERATURE REVIEW:

The literature review is a research paper with three ingredients:

a) A brief discussion of the issue (the person, event, idea). [While this section should be brief, it needs to set up the thesis and literature that follow.] b) Your thesis about the literature c) A clear argument, using the works on topic as evidence, i.e., you discuss the sources in relation to your thesis, not as a separate topic.

These ingredients must be presented in an essay with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

6) ARGUING YOUR THESIS:

The thesis of a literature review should not only describe how the literature has evolved, but also provide a clear evaluation of that literature.  You should assess the literature in terms of the quality of either individual works or categories of works.  For instance, you might argue that a certain approach (e.g. social history, cultural history, or another) is better because it deals with a more complex view of the issue or because they use a wider array of source materials more effectively. You should also ensure that you integrate that evaluation throughout your argument.  Doing so might include negative assessments of some works in order to reinforce your argument regarding the positive qualities of other works and approaches to the topic.

Within each group, you should provide essential information about each work: the author’s thesis, the work’s title and date, the author’s supporting arguments and major evidence.

In most cases, arranging the sources chronologically by publication date within each section makes the most sense because earlier works influenced later ones in one way or another.  Reference to publication date also indicates that you are aware of this significant historiographical element.

As you discuss each work, DO NOT FORGET WHY YOU ARE DISCUSSING IT.  YOU ARE PRESENTING AND SUPPORTING A THESIS ABOUT THE LITERATURE.

When discussing a particular work for the first time, you should refer to it by the author’s full name, the work’s title, and year of publication (either in parentheses after the title or worked into the sentence).

For example, “The field of slavery studies has recently been transformed by Ben Johnson’s The New Slave (2001)” and “Joe Doe argues in his 1997 study, Slavery in America, that . . . .”

Your paper should always note secondary sources’ relationship to each other, particularly in terms of your thesis about the literature (e.g., “Unlike Smith’s work, Mary Brown’s analysis reaches the conclusion that . . . .” and “Because of Anderson’s reliance on the president’s personal papers, his interpretation differs from Barry’s”). The various pieces of the literature are “related” to each other, so you need to indicate to the reader some of that relationship.  (It helps the reader follow your thesis, and it convinces the reader that you know what you are talking about.)

7) DOCUMENTATION:

Each source you discuss in your paper must be documented using footnotes/endnotes and a bibliography.  Providing author and title and date in the paper is not sufficient.  Use correct Turabian/Chicago Manual of Style form.  [See  Bibliography  and  Footnotes/Endnotes  pages.]

In addition, further supporting, but less significant, sources should be included in  content foot or endnotes .  (e.g., “For a similar argument to Ben Johnson’s, see John Terry, The Slave Who Was New (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 3-45.”)

8 ) CONCLUSION OF LITERATURE REVIEW:

Your conclusion should not only reiterate your argument (thesis), but also discuss questions that remain unanswered by the literature.  What has the literature accomplished?  What has not been studied?  What debates need to be settled?

Additional writing guidelines

History and American Studies

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Ranking of the 100 Best Literary Magazines

In some ways it’s ridiculous to rank literary magazines by the number of awards they’ve received, but it still can be useful for writers to figure out where to submit.

(If you’re looking for nonfiction or essay rankings, go to my Ranking of Literary Nonfiction Markets ). 

The list below arranges literary journals in order of how many times they’ve had a short story or special mention in the last eleven years in the Best American Short Stories (BASS). I award a certain number of points for the winners and a lesser number of points for every special mention. Every October I’ll update the page to reflect the new year.

There were seventeen newcomers added to this year’s list, up from twelve newcomers last year. Some of the journals were new, and some have been around quite a well and only now are being recognized by BASS.

If you’d like help with your short story, I offer an editing service that will take your short story to the next level.

From copy-editing to character advice, I give detailed feedback on what’s working and what needs to be improved in your story.

Read more and contact me .

On statistics : statistics is a epistemic methodology prized by our modernistic, science-obsessed world as the primary way to Know Things. The cold hard facts trumps subjective knowledge, right? But I would argue that statistics gives us only a very limited view of the world, and one which necessarily skews “proper” knowledge.

Let me be less philosophical and more practical: Please don’t overestimate the important of the list below. The list below does not tell you whether a literary journal is good or not, it only tells you whether the Best American Short Story editors happened to like the flavor of stories in a literary journal. That, necessarily, is entirely subjective, and I encourage you to discover for yourself the type of fiction each literary magazine publishes, as well as explore the many  excellent  literary journals that don’t appear on this list.

I dislike some “high” level literary journals and really love “low” level literary journals. So while my tastes are not necessarily reflected by the list below, that’s good, because it will force you all, my lovely, devoted readers, to form your own judgments.

For those of you already deep in the literary magazine world, I hope that this Best American Short Story list is one aid among many to help you figure out where to submit and subscribe.

Southern Review and Zyzzyva had great showings this year. Zyzzyva moved from 15 to 11, continuing their upward momentum, and Southern Review moved from 12 to 7.

On the other hand, we had an enormous amount of shut-outs this year.  One Story , American Short Fiction , Atlantic Monthly , AGNI ,  Virginia Quarterly Review and Glimmer Train got completely shut out — not a single point for any of them. Which basically means their fiction didn’t resonate with this year’s editor, Roxane Gay. 

Gulf Coast has moved up a great deal over the past few years, up to a respectable spot more commensurate with their reputation, and Passages North got on the map in a big way, going from zero points to 5 points this year.

Another lit mag that’s worth noting is Fifth Wednesday Journal . They’ve been consistently amassing nods from the BASS editors, and they should be on your radar to submit to.

Also, you accomplished short story writers might be planning on writing a novel next. In that case, I’d recommend you read my post on how to pull off a smashbang novel that lights your reader’s brain on fire .

It’s one of my best posts on storytelling and novel advice, so click that link above.

*If there is an asterisk next to the name, it means that journal is no longer publishing new material.*

Best Literary Magazines Rankings :

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14 comments

You say AGNI got shut out this year, but there it is at #16.

The numbers are from the last ten years. Just because one doesn’t get points this year, that doesn’t mean they drop to zero.

OK. I see. Thank you.

Fairly odd. “The New Yorker” is so very mainstream and so well-known that one is not very enlightened by the ranking. Moreover, their “fiction” is hardly in the same league as their non-fiction…..so when you rank them by “literary,” it’s not clear if you are referring to non-fiction OR fiction. Plus you include book REVIEWS further obfuscating matters. Too, no “New York Review of Books” as long as you’re going to include reviews of books as “literary”; in addition, I don’t see “Partisan Review”. Glad to see “McSweeneys” didn’t make the list: near-pure garbage. As I say, an odd list. Nevertheless, I’ll be checking out some of the them.

Yes, if you’re a writer the biggest acceptance of your short story would be New Yorker. I’m certain the NYRB does not apply to John’s list here, nor do any of them do only book reviews.

Also, thanks for the list John! It’s been useful for my submitting process for the last year plus!

NYRB of course also publishes poetry.

To be honest, I really think No Contact Magazine is one of the best lit mags out there in the game. I find their selection to be very current and their overall brand to be one of the best.

Slice, Redivider, Chicago Tribune, and New York Tyrant do not seem to be publishing anymore and probably warrant an asterisk. Would you consider my journal, The Summerset Review? We have been around twenty years.

Redivider is still going, with a Duotrope listing.

Sincere thank you for working this and other literary lists. We writers are a selfish lot, too happy to scavenge any leads down to the metaphorical bone, and run off without so much as a nod to who actually felled and dressed the meat.

And anyone complaining about the quality of the list. Come on, it’s free. And helpful. And you were too lazy to do it yourself (you know who you are).

Some folks in the comments didn’t bother to read how the list was made… SMH

Chicago Quarterly Review has two appearances and six distinguished stories in BASS between 2017 and 2021–surely that totals more than the 5 they’re given here?

Correction to my earlier comment: Chicago Quarterly Review’s two stories and six honorable mentions in BASS range between 2016 and 2021. (PS they also have two honorable mentions in the 2022 issue)

I believe it’s no coincidence. The publications with the most stories selected for Best American Short Stories are also the magazines available to the masses. If I had to pay for them, I would not be able to subscribe to the top 10. However with various Emagazine formats available via the local public library, I can be a regular reader of the top ranked magazines.

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Literary Review

The current issue, march 2012 issue - out now.

In This Issue: John Gray on Tony Judt’s Thinking the Twentieth Century • Elaine Showalter on the first Pop Age • Donald Rayfield on Belarus • Praveen Swami on Sharia law • A C Grayling: What are Universities For? • The Letters of Joseph Roth • Jane Ridley on the Queen • Seamus Perry on the poetry of translation • Jonathan Fenby on Mao • Richard Holloway on religion for atheists • John Sutherland on growing old • Frances Wilson on cruelty and laughter and much, much more…

August 2024

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‘This magazine is flush with tight, smart writing.’ Washington Post

Literary Review covers the most important and interesting books published each month, from history and biography to fiction and travel. The magazine was founded in 1979 and is based in central London.

Literary Review covers the most important and interesting books published each month, from history and biography to fiction and travel. The magazine was founded in 1979 and is based in London.

Highlights from the Current Issue

August 2024, Issue 532 John Adamson on Oliver Cromwell * Edward Vallance on the English Republic * Andrew McMillan on Thom Gunn * Tanya Harrod on art and motherhood * Alexander Christie-Miller on Turkey * Peter Davidson on Caspar David Friedrich * Stephen Walsh on Tchaikovsky * Douglas Field on James Baldwin * Dmitri Levitin on Andreas Vesalius * Lucy Moore on artistic swimming * George Cochrane on the new horror * Rosa Lyster on Ursula Parrott * Peyton Skipwith on Charles J Connick *  Glenn Richardson on Catherine de’ Medici * Ian Ellison on Kafka * Jonathan Romney on Twisters  and much, much more…

John Adamson

Oliver cromwell: commander in chief, by ronald hutton.

Ever since Thomas Carlyle first launched his Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell on the world in 1845, the Lord Protector’s published words have exercised an almost mesmeric hold on posterity. Overnight, they transformed a figure who had hitherto been a byword for villainy – was he not the killer of King Charles I? – into a hero for the new Victorian age: a God-fearing, class-transcending champion of ‘russet-coated captains’ who became Britain’s first non-royal head of state. His words resonated with a newly politically ascendant and morally earnest middle class. And in Hamo Thornycroft’s vast sculpture installed outside Westminster Hall in 1899, the Carlylean transformation of Oliver begun by the Letters and Speeches found its embodiment in bronze...  read more

More Articles from this Issue

Peter davidson, caspar david friedrich: art for a new age, by markus bertsch & johannes grave (edd), caspar david friedrich: infinite landscapes, by ralph gleis & birgit verwiebe (edd).

The German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), who is celebrated in these two books published to accompany the exhibitions in Hamburg and Berlin marking the 250th anniversary of his birth, has fascinated me all my life. When I was at school, his mysterious and emotive paintings...  read more

The German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), who is celebrated in these two books published to accompany the exhibitions in Hamburg and Berlin marking the 250th anniversary of his birth, has fascinated me all my life. When I was at school, his mysterious and emotive paintings started to appear on the covers of the grey-spined Penguin Modern Classics series: Abbey in the Oakwood on the cover of Hermann Hesse’s Narziss and Goldmund ; Woman at a Window (the woman’s back turned, one shutter open to the spring morning and the riverbank) on that of Thomas Mann’s Lotte in Weimar . Covers featuring Sea of Ice , with its unfathomable grey-blue sky, and the yearning, autumnal Moonwatchers soon followed. Every image was memorable; every one hinted at emotional and spiritual depths embodied in northern European landscapes and places.

This fascination led me to attempt an undergraduate dissertation on the halted traveller in Romantic poetry and painting. I was following an intuition that Friedrich’s solitary figure in the storm-lit uplands of Mountain Landscape with Rainbow resonated with those moments of disquiet in Wordsworth’s Prelude that are perceptions of sublimity in nature shot through with loneliness and melancholy: ‘forlorn cascades/Among the windings of the mountain brooks’. A tutor reproved me for writing about a painter in relation to poetry, especially a painter tainted by fascist approval. I still think that I was onto something.

Andrew Mcmillan

Thom gunn: a cool queer life, by michael nott.

If this were a biography of any of the other great 20th-century poets, one might open a review by contrasting the new publication with other books that had appeared about them. How does this one measure up? Does it present information hitherto unknown? In the case of Thom Gunn, no such body of work exists. To piece together from scratch the fragments of Gunn’s life, that is Michael Nott’s mission here. It has been twenty years since Gunn died of acute polysubstance abuse, aged seventy-four...  read more

If this were a biography of any of the other great 20th-century poets, one might open a review by contrasting the new publication with other books that had appeared about them. How does this one measure up? Does it present information hitherto unknown? In the case of Thom Gunn, no such body of work exists. To piece together from scratch the fragments of Gunn’s life, that is Michael Nott’s mission here.

It has been twenty years since Gunn died of acute polysubstance abuse, aged seventy-four. Thanks in large part to the efforts of Gunn’s friend Clive Wilmer, who edited his Selected Poems in 2017 and, with Nott and August Kleinzahler, his letters in 2021, as well as other academics such as Stefania Michelucci whose own critical study of Gunn’s poetry was published in 2009, he’s been having a bit of a renaissance. It’s odd that he needed one at all – that he didn’t sit on the same shelf as those he came of age with, such as Ted Hughes (Faber brought out a hugely popular joint collection in 1962) and Philip Larkin. One factor is Gunn’s decision to relocate to the United States. I remember once chatting about Gunn with a renowned biographer who said, ‘Oh, but he’s just so terribly American, isn’t he.’ In the years after I started reading him, it often seemed that Gunn was stranded somewhere in the middle of the ocean, too American for the English, too English for the Americans. He was thought too queer, too structurally formal. One of Nott’s successes in this biography is to take the contradictions and idiosyncrasies and treat them not as problems but as the foundations of a three-dimensional portrait of Gunn as man and poet.

Tanya Harrod

Acts of creation: on art and motherhood, by hettie judah.

This remarkable book begins dramatically and truthfully: ‘A monstrous child is blocking my view and has carved a nest in the soft darkness of my head. It eats the hours, this child, leaving me only crumbs.’ Motherhood can be overwhelming, however longed for. It is never a small thing, even if the rest of the world chooses to ignore it or view it as a block to professionalism. Cyril Connolly’s remark in Enemies of Promise, ‘There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall’,...  read more

This remarkable book begins dramatically and truthfully: ‘A monstrous child is blocking my view and has carved a nest in the soft darkness of my head. It eats the hours, this child, leaving me only crumbs.’ Motherhood can be overwhelming, however longed for. It is never a small thing, even if the rest of the world chooses to ignore it or view it as a block to professionalism. Cyril Connolly’s remark in Enemies of Promise (1938), ‘There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall’, was, of course, a reference to male creativity. But women have routinely been brainwashed into concurring with this dismissive observation – made, admittedly, before Connolly had children. In the 1950s, respected male tutors in colleges of art would dismiss female making as ‘frustrated maternity’. The sculptor Reg Butler asked Slade School of Fine Art students in 1962, ‘Can a woman become a vital creative artist without ceasing to be a woman except for the purposes of a census?’  

The 20th century proved a surprisingly bleak period for the recognition of women’s artistic activity. The flood of books on women artists which had appeared in the 19th century dwindled. And the women’s movement of the 1970s grappled with a peculiarly limited art world, characterised by exclusionary boundaries and plenty of straightforward misogyny. Art that celebrated or commented on motherhood was regarded as beyond the pale, even if presented in the dispassionate form of Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document (1973–9) or Susan Hiller’s Ten Months (1977–9). Of this record of her pregnancy, Hiller noted that few could ‘accept the right of a woman to be both the artist and the sexed subject of a work’.

Alexander Christie-Miller

The endless country: a personal journey through turkey’s first hundred years, by sami kent.

Turkey marked its centenary last year in muted fashion. Celebrations for the anniversary on 29 October were cut back due to ‘the alarming human tragedy in Gaza’, the state broadcaster said, though some claimed the true reason was that the country’s longtime leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is no fan of the Westernised, secular model of statehood imposed...  read more

Turkey marked its centenary last year in muted fashion. Celebrations for the anniversary on 29 October were cut back due to ‘the alarming human tragedy in Gaza’, the state broadcaster said, though some claimed the true reason was that the country’s longtime leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is no fan of the Westernised, secular model of statehood imposed by Atatürk a hundred years ago.

Whatever the truth, it often seems that there is little to celebrate in today’s Turkey. The country is mired in economic crisis, with inflation running at 70 per cent. It is riven by social tensions, culture wars and mass migration, and languishing in a state of fear and despondency under Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule. ‘Perhaps the cruellest part of the Turkey I had seen over the last few years’, writes Sami Kent in The Endless Country , a personal and idiosyncratic history of Turkey’s first century, is ‘the brute fact of unaccountable power, and how callously, how capriciously it decides the fate of others’.

Rosa Lyster

By ursula parrott.

How do marketing departments decide when to pitch a reissued novel as a ‘forgotten classic’? Does it need to have been greeted with acclaim the first time round before dropping out of view, or is it okay to define it as such even if it attracted little attention on first appearance, sitting around fretfully in second-hand bookshops and waiting for an excitable young agent to hold it to the light and discover that it has the weight and feel of a classic?...  read more

How do marketing departments decide when to pitch a reissued novel as a ‘forgotten classic’? Does it need to have been greeted with acclaim the first time round before dropping out of view, or is it okay to define it as such even if it attracted little attention on first appearance, sitting around fretfully in second-hand bookshops and waiting for an excitable young agent to hold it to the light and discover that it has the weight and feel of a classic?

Kay Dick’s They (‘the radical dystopian classic, lost for forty years’) falls into the second category. Initially, critics were dismissive or indifferent, sales were bad and the novel disappeared almost before anyone had noticed it was there. Caroline Blackwood’s The Fate of Mary Rose , soon to be reissued by Virago, falls into the first. Widely and favourably reviewed, it was published in several languages before going out of print. Ursula Parrott’s 1929 novel Ex-Wife (‘a forgotten classic … darkly funny’) is a more complicated case – not so much a once-acclaimed book searching for a new generation of readers as a racy bestseller looking for a home in the literary fiction section.

Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water

By vicki valosik.

When F Scott Fitzgerald fell in love with Zelda Sayre in the late 1910s, he was as impressed by her courage on the high diving board as by her flesh-coloured silk swimming costume. Her fearlessness and strength were part of her allure. During the late 19th and 20th centuries, as Vicki Valosik shows in Swimming Pretty, water was a hugely important arena for women seeking...  read more

When F Scott Fitzgerald fell in love with Zelda Sayre in the late 1910s, he was as impressed by her courage on the high diving board as by her flesh-coloured silk swimming costume. Her fearlessness and strength were part of her allure. During the late 19th and 20th centuries, as Vicki Valosik shows in Swimming Pretty , water was a hugely important arena for women seeking to assert their autonomy and independence.

Ostensibly a history of synchronised swimming – renamed artistic swimming in 2017 – Valosik’s fascinating book opens in London in the 1850s, when the enterprising superintendent of a new ‘natatorium’, hoping to attract more visitors to his swimming pool, began inviting families to ‘aquatic entertainments’ at which his children performed in races and galas. In 1875 his fourteen-year-old daughter, Agnes Beckwith, swam five miles from London Bridge to Greenwich, blowing kisses to cheering onlookers on the riverbanks. A hundred years later, Sports Illustrated magazine hailed this feat as the start of women’s participation in spectator sports.

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Shakespeare and war, shakespeare at war: a material history, by amy lidster & sonia massai (edd), stuart jeffries, we are free to change the world: hannah arendt’s lessons in love and disobedience, by lyndsey stonebridge, richard williams, by philip norman, jennifer potter, the extinction of irena rey, by jennifer croft, from the archives, from the march 2020 issue, peter conrad, warhol: a life as art, by blake gopnik.

From the June 1999 issue

Christopher hitchens, some times in america, by alexander chancellor.

From the June 1989 issue

Hilary mantel, what am i doing here, by bruce chatwin.

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Biographies of Thom Gunn should sit on the shelf alongside those of his contemporaries Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes. But Michael Nott’s is the very first. @AMcMillanPoet wonders if it will usher Gunn and his poetry back into the mainstream.

Andrew Mcmillan - Lyric & Leather

Andrew Mcmillan: Lyric & Leather - Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life by Michael Nott

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Breaking this year, skateboarding in 2020 and, in 1984, synchronised swimming: newly added Olympics sports tend to provoke some turned up noses. Lucy Moore looks at the untold story of women in water and their struggle for recognition as athletes.

Lucy Moore - Making a Splash

Lucy Moore: Making a Splash - Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water by Vicki Valosik

Caspar David Friedrich is perhaps the archetypal Romantic painter. Yet Friedrich, part of a lively social circle, was not straightforwardly identifiable with his isolated figures. Peter Davidson goes in search of the method in Friedrich’s Romanticism.

Peter Davidson - King of the Mountain

Peter Davidson: King of the Mountain - Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Age by Markus Bertsch & Johannes ...

Current Issue

September 2024

Japanese Women Writers in the 21st Century headlines the September 2024 issue of World Literature Today. Additional highlights include numerous interviews, fiction and Alejandro Puyana on six “classic” and “upstart” literary debuts. Be sure to check out the latest must-read titles in WLT’s book review section—including new releases by Conceição Lima, Yoko Ogawa, and Salman Rushdie—and much more!

WLT  Weekly

Threshing Pain and Passion through Poetry: Gjekë Marinaj’s Teach Me How to Whisper

Exploring the Burning Questions: A Conversation with Cara Lopez Lee

Most read content.

Three Poems from Ireland

10 Questions for Hwang Bo-reum

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World Literature Today Announces Finalists for 2025 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Jury Announced for the 2025 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature

World Literature Today Announces 2024 Student Translation Prize Winners

Feature Section

Breaking Gendered Expectations in Japanese Lit

The noticeable changes from twentieth- to twenty-first-century writers reflects the continued presence and importance of feminism internationally as Japanese women continue to move out of the spaces given to them within a male-dominated field.

5 Questions for Hiroko Oyamada

An interview with Hiroko Oyamada, author of The Factory, which won the Shincho Prize, and The Hole, which won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.

A lover of love, everything Momo does is designed to give her the advantage.

Featured Book Reviews

Tehrangeles

Porochista Khakpour

The Slow Horizon That Breathes

Dimitra Kotoula. Trans. Maria Nazos

Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder

Salman Rushdie

Best Literary Translations 2024

Guest ed. Jane Hirshfield. Ed. Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Öykü Tekten & Kola Tubosun

Mina’s Matchbox: A Novel

Yoko Ogawa. Trans. Stephen B. Snyder

No Gods Live Here: Selected Poems

Conceição Lima. Trans. Shook

Frost’s Descent

“On the last solar term of autumn / so many good things are disappearing / The birds have printed their footsteps on the frosted tiles,” from “Frost‘s Descent,” by Ma Yongbo (trans. by Zack Rogow)

Two Poems from Ukraine

“my country is at war and I want a farmer cheese and vanilla bun / to travel to Europe and to not see the sign ‘You’re Safe Here’,” from [My country is at war], by Olga Bragina (trans. by Olga Zilberbourg)

Dead Horse Bay

“n the free circulation of commodities, there is no center or edge. We are all part of the same untraceable sludge,” from “Dead Horse Bay,” by Santiago Acosta (trans. by Tiffany Troy & The Women in Translation Project)

Fiction & Creative Nonfiction

Deciding between his mother’s sweet love and his father’s conditional approval, Kimurguk endures a harrowing rite of passage to transform from boy to man.

You Have to Read This!

Be careful what you wish for—especially online, especially if you’re a woman—in this modern adaptation of W. W. Jacobs’s “The Monkey’s Paw.”

The Devil’s Offspring

Desperate to have a child, a couple takes an unorthodox route to conception. But did they bargain with the devil?

Shizue Ogawa, Global Ambassador of Japanese Poetry

Shizue Ogawa pays particular attention to the resonances between Western and Eastern culture that inspire her philosophical, aesthetic, and cosmic reflections. Here, Alice-Catherine Carls offers an overview of her remarkable literary career along with four of Ogawa’s best-known poems.

Rediscovering Soyinka on Ebrohimie Road

Inspired by a photo and the histories connected to it, a writer makes a film to mark Wole Soyinka’s ninetieth year.

Another Way to Begin

Can we tell stories, the author asks, “in a way that makes more breathing room, that does not crush humans, not even one, not even a little girl?”

The Tragedy of the Titanic Has All the Dimensions of Fate: A Conversation with Timothy Schaffert

An interview with Timothy Schaffert, author of The TItanic Survivors Book Club.

Into the Woods: A Conversation with Italian Writer Maddalena Vaglio Tanet

A conversation with Italian novelist Maddalena Vaglio Tanet, whose debut novel, Untold Lessons, tells the story of schoolteacher Silvia who, plagued by guilt after the suicide of one of her students, suddenly goes missing.

The I-Know-Nothing Postulate: A Conversation with Ukrainian Filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa

A conversation with acclaimed Ukrainian film director Sergei Loznitsa, discussing the relationship between history and cinema, balancing documentary with narrative filmmaking, and much besides.

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Find a home for your poems, stories, essays, and reviews by researching the publications vetted by our editorial staff and listed in the Literary Magazines database. Here you’ll find editorial policies, submission guidelines, and contact information—everything you need to determine which publications match your vision for your writing and your writing life. Use the filters below to find magazines with reading periods that are open now or opening soon (within the next thirty days), accept unsolicited submissions, and match all of your criteria for the perfect publisher of your work.

Print magazine for Fiction ,

The Pinch was founded in 1980 as the Memphis State Review by William Page. In its first few years, the journal published such well-known writers as Robert Bly, Phillip Levine, Mary Oliver, Robert Penn Warren, and Margaret Atwood.

Submission guidelines →

🌍 Territory: USA

💰 Submission fee: $0

⏱️ Frequency: 2 times a year

🧑‍💻 Online submissions: Yes

Salamander, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit literary organization that publishes a biannual magazine of poetry, fiction, memoir, and works in translation. It was founded by Jennifer Barber in 1992 with the aim of publishing a generation of writers reaching artistic maturity and deserving of a wider audience alongside new work by established writers.

Print & Online magazine for Fiction ,

On Spec adheres to a strong mandate that has served us well over the years. We discover and showcase quality works by predominantly Canadian writers and artists, in the genre we call “Fantastic” literature. We foster the growth of emerging writers in this genre, by offering support and direction through constructive criticism, education, mentoring, and manuscript development.

🌍 Territory: CA

⏱️ Frequency: 4 times a year

Looking for an editor to polish your manuscript?

The best professionals are already on Reedsy, come meet them. Create your free account to request free quotes today.

Learn more about the Reedsy Marketplace .

Alaska Quarterly Review

Alaska Quarterly Review publishes fiction, short plays, poetry, photo essays, and literary non-fiction in traditional and experimental styles. Although we publish established writers, most of our content comes from unsolicited submissions and the editors are committed to publishing new and emerging writers.

🧑‍💻 Online submissions: No

State of Matter

Online magazine for Fiction ,

State of Matter is on a quest to define what Speculative Fiction means from a South Asian perspective. We publish fiction and poetry from international authors, with a keen eye for South Asian writing.

🌍 Territory: India

Curlew Quarterly

Curlew Quarterly, New York’s literary and photo journal, publishes poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, which includes nearly all forms of reporting and journalism. Launched in August of 2017, our printed journal and online Daily celebrate the lives, homes, and work of poets, writers, and distinct professionals living in New York, NY.

🌍 Territory: United States

The Dark Sire

The Dark Sire is an online magazine for short fiction, poetry, and art in the subgenres of Fantasy, Gothic, Horror & Psychological Realism

Conjunctions

Bard College's literary journal Conjunctions publishes innovative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by emerging voices and contemporary masters.

👀 Average visits: 20,000 /month

Asimov's Science Fiction

From its earliest days in 1977 under the editorial direction of Isaac Asimov, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine has maintained the tradition of publishing the best stories, unsurpassed in modern science fiction, from award-winning authors and first-time writers alike.

⏱️ Frequency: 6 times a year

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Featuring the world’s most celebrated crime writers alongside brilliant new voices. Cutting-edge content includes suspense thrillers, whodunits, and noir, reviews, and an editor’s blog. Join us … if you dare!

The Atlantic

The Atlantic is always interested in great nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. A general familiarity with what we have published in the past is the best guide to what we're looking for. All manuscripts should be submitted as a Word document or PDF. Succinct pitches may be submitted in the body of an email.

⏱️ Frequency: 10 times a year

Greensboro Review

The Greensboro Review is always on the lookout for new short stories and poems from writers at any stage of their career. The work you’ll find in the pages of the GR rarely conforms to any one theme, subject, or style—our editors read for those “bolts of lightning” that come with a surprising poem or story, the pleasure of spotting something new or discovering a fresh take on the familiar.

💰 Submission fee: $3

Ginosko Literary Journal

Ginosko: A Greek word meaning the recognition of truth from experience.

The Antigonish Review

Founded in 1970, The Antigonish Review is the third longest-running creative-writing journal in the Maritimes and one of the oldest continuing literary magazines in Canada.

👀 Average visits: 349,600 /month

🌍 Territory: Canada

Seaside Gothic

Seaside Gothic is a quarterly literary magazine from the edge of the sea where the frontier of civilisation meets the wild of the water.

🌍 Territory: United Kingdom

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The halls of literary success are paved with authors who got their start appearing in literary magazines — such as Zora Neale Hurston, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Edith Wharton, Ursula Le Guin, J.D. Salinger, George Saunders, Alice Munro, Flannery O’Connor, and many more. 

For centuries, literary magazines have highlighted works that would otherwise struggle to reach readers. Poetry, short stories, essays are all forms of writing that own very tiny shares in the publishing landscape — except in the world of literary magazines, where they reign supreme.

If you’re an aspiring author, submitting to literary magazines is a great way to get your foot into the door of the publishing industry, as it allows you to build up your credentials and reach readers. That being said, having your work appear in a literary magazine isn’t as easy as hitting “submit.” While they can act as a stepping stone for writers who wish to go on to have a career in publishing, you shouldn’t view literary magazines as simply a means to an end — if only because doing so will very likely reduce your chances of ever actually being featured in one of them.

And on that note, let’s get started with our first tip for getting your work featured in some of the best literary magazines out there.

Tips for submitting to literary magazines 

Ensure you’re submitting to the right places.

When you think of literary magazines, your mind might automatically go to The New Yorker . Or it might go to independent webzines that specialize in very niche genres. Maybe you think of university-funded quarterlies like The New England Review . All this is to say that the range of lit mags out there is broad and the kinds of things they publish also ranges — from short lit fic to flash space operas, and everything in between. 

So before you decide to submit your short stories or poetry to a magazine, make sure you do your due diligence and research what kinds of things they publish, and where your work is really a match.

Don’t submit to tons of publications all at one

“Cast a wide net” shouldn’t be your mantra when it comes to submitting to lit mags. As mentioned, all magazines have their own styles. So spending your time ensuring your submissions are targeted at the right places is much more valuable than sending your writing to as many different publications as possible. Editors can usually scout fairly quickly the pieces that have been submitted en masse, without any regard for their specific publication.

Instead, make a list of the magazines you want to submit to and group them into tiers. Tier One can be your top five magazines, Tier Two your next five favorite, and so on. This is not only a good way to make sure you’re giving each submission care and attention, it’s also a good way to make sure you don’t get the same piece of writing accepted by two different magazines, forcing you to pull your submission from one of them.

When it comes to making your list, don’t only consider what magazines have prestige, huge audiences, or hefty cash payouts. The best magazines to submit to are the ones that you actually enjoy reading. Because chances are those are the magazines that are going to be most interested in the kind of things you’re writing.

Keep your cover letter short and to-the-point

Editors are not won over by cover letters. If you’ve written a great story and have publishing credentials to boot, sure, your cover letter might help win them over. But if your submission isn’t strong, your cover letter is going to mean nil. So let your cover letter mention the important bits, make sure it provides any specific information that’s requested in the submission guidelines, and let your entry do the heavy lifting. 

Typically, a cover letter will mention a couple of the previous places you’ve been published as well as any other relevant experience you might have. You can also add a personal touch by mentioning a previous story or issue you particularly enjoyed.

What your letter shouldn’t mention is every place you’ve been published (up to 5 will suffice). It shouldn’t summarize your entry, your life story, or your “writing journey,” and any previous experience you mention should be related in some way to writing, publishing, or your entry.

Thoroughly edit your story — and follow submission guidelines!

An editor is probably not going to banish an otherwise very strong entry to the slush pile because of a misplaced typo. That being said, they have lots of reading to do, and while most editors won’t consciously read an entry looking for reasons not to like it, at the end of the day they can only accept so many pieces. So if you make their jobs easier by giving them a reason to pass on your piece, they’re going to take it. If it’s not adequately proofread, there’s only so long someone can continue reading even the strongest writing before the spelling errors convince them to stop.

Another quick way to convince an editor to pass on your entry is to not follow the submission guidelines. If the guidelines ask you to include specific information or to format your story in a certain way, follow those instructions to a tee. If the guide doesn’t tell you how to format your story, go classic: Arial or Times New Roman 12-point font, double-spaced. To ensure your submissions look professional, you can always copy and paste them into our free formatting tool, the Reedsy Book Editor !

Editors do want to like your submission

The publishing world is competitive, so it’s natural for authors to stress about all the little details of submitting to a literary magazine — whether to add page numbers to their document, who to address in their cover letter, whether they’ll stand a chance as a brand new author, etc. And while we did just mention that editors generally won’t put up a fight if you give them a reason to pass on your entry, they also won’t toss aside a submission they love just because the full package isn’t 100% perfect.

Remember, editors are looking for quality art they feel is going to resonate with their readers. If you can provide them with that, they’re going to be on your side.

Don’t just do it for the money or prestige

If you’re submitting to lit mags with the hopes of raking in the cash, you are more than likely going to be disappointed. Sure, there are some big-time magazines out there that offer larger paycheques to their writers and widespread readership, but many of them don’t accept unsolicited submissions — or come with extremely steep competition.

Most literary magazines are run on very tiny budgets that can’t afford to pay the writers they feature. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t submit to them. The exposure and credibility an emerging writer can gain from having their work featured across a number of smaller, indie publications are still very valuable and shouldn’t be overlooked.

Have fun — and be proud of what you publish!

Yes, having your work appear in literary magazines can help build up your publishing resume. But if you’re not writing and publishing work you feel really proud of, what’s the point? Readers don’t need more stories that make it into magazines because they follow the right trends or say the right things, we want literature that the author clearly loved writing. 

So, as we mentioned earlier, don’t just submit a piece because you think it’s going to get you somewhere. Submit something because you think it’s strong, unique, and worthwhile. Write and submit work you can proudly stand by! 

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Literary Magazines

The Big List of Literary Magazines

December 16, 2023 by Every Writer

This is our Big List of Literary Magazines, here you’ll find an extensive list of over 500 currently publishing literary magazines, arranged alphabetically from A to Z. This expansive directory includes established publications alongside up-and-coming journals across a diverse range of styles and genres.

From avant-garde poetry zines printed on a shoestring budget to prestigious venues like The New Yorker and Poetry Magazine, our list has a literary home for every writer. You’ll find magazines focused on fiction, nonfiction, poetry, flash fiction, experimental, prose, hybrid works, and more. Some concentrate on publishing new and emerging voices, while others feature luminaries at the heights of the literary world.

We have comprehensively compiled these literary magazines using careful research and curation. However, publications may change status or close from time to time. If you find a magazine on our list that is defunct or no longer accepting submissions, please notify us in the comments section. With the collaborative power of our writing community, we can maintain an up-to-date resource for all writers looking to submit their work.

• 2 river review 2river review is an online literary journal based in Santa Rosa, California that publishes poetry and visual art. The journal was founded in 1996.
• 34thParallel Magazine At 34thParallel Magazine what we’re about is giving you the rock-star treatment—sorry no sex and drugs!!
• 3Elements Review 3Elements Review was founded to spark imagination, to provide a unique creative challenge, and at the very least, to allow writers and artists a bit of fun with our three element prompts.
• 7th-Circle Pyrite The 7th Circle of Hell as represented in Dante's Inferno is reserved for those who have committed acts of violence. In the world we live in—where violence runs rampant
• 96th of October The name of this journal, 96th of October, is derived from a character in the Pogo comic strip who wishes to extend the sway of Halloween to where it displaces Christmas. Giving October 96 days effectively annexes December and the first week of January.
• A Quiet Courage A Quiet Courage is an online literary journal specializing in tiny words. We publish compelling, poignant, memorable,
• A Velvet Giant A VELVET GIANT is a genreless online literary journal, meaning that we do not categorize the work we receive by genre.
• A3 Review The A3 Review is a literary magazine that behaves like a map, made by the folks who make Writing Maps.
• Aberration Labyrinth This magazine is about expressing yourself. We do not restrict our publication to the confines of traditional poetry. If you write about drunken nights out, remembered or imagined, we want
• Adelaide Literary Magazine We publish literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and promote the writers we publish, helping both new, emerging, and established authors reach a wider literary audience.
• Adroit Journal The Adroit Journal has been the subject of a fair amount of napkin scribbling since November 2010, when Founder/Editor-in-Chief Peter LaBerge decided that the world needed a literary magazine run entirely by high school and college students that helped the world in more ways than one. The Adroit Journal, bright with enthusiasm, was born. And ...
• After Dinner Conversation After Dinner Conversation is an independent, nonprofit literary magazine with a focus on curating short fiction stories that explore philosophical and ethical
• After Hours After Hours is a semi-annual literary magazine publishing poetry, fiction, art, and photography from Chicago
• Agonia www.agonia.net is an international interactive website for writing and literature, formed by numerous cultural communities and languages. It is a platform where writers around the world publish their works, engage in providing constructive feedback critique oriented towards honing skills in the writing process.
• Alarmist The Alarmist is a fresh, new, dark, funny and twisted printed literary magazine published biannually.
• Alaska Quarterly Review Alaska Quarterly Review is one of America?s premier literary magazines and a source of powerful, new voices. AQR publishes short stories, short novellas, novel excerpts,
• Ambit Magazine Ambit is a surreptitious peek inside a private world. Without it such vital sparks of inspiration could well be lost for ever.? ? Ralph Steadman Ambit is a 96-page quarterly literary and artwork
• American Aesthetic, The To better understand the objectives of The American Aesthetic, one must first understand what prompted the creation of this poetry journal in the first place.
• American Chordata American Chordata is a biannual magazine of bright voices in fiction, nonfiction essay, and poetry, as well as art and photography.
• American Poetry Review American Poetry Review is a prestigious literary magazine founded in 1972. Published 6 times per year, APR focuses exclusively on publishing acclaimed contemporary poetry from the US and around the world, as well as poetry-related articles, interviews, essays and reviews.
• Angie’s DIARY | Online Writing Magazine Angie?s DIARY is a contemporary, online magazine and community for writers, readers and editors. Free Submission of stories, essays, articles, poems and excerpts. Massive exposure
• Anotherealm: Magazine of Speculative Fiction > A Free Monthly Magazine Featuring Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.
• Antigonish Review, The The Antigonish Review is a creative literary quarterly that publishes poetry, fiction, critical articles, and reviews. Our ideal reader has extensive interests and seeks the creative. Major accomplishments of TAR include giving
• Apalachee Review (links to site) Apalachee Review
• Apocalypse Confidential Established in 2021, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL is a web magazine of edgy extrapolations, fringe fascinations, occult obsessions, risky ruminations, and aberrant associations. We are a literary journal obsessed with the underworld
• Apple Valley Review The Apple Valley Review, a semiannual online literary journal, was founded in 2005 by its current editor, Leah Browning. It is published in the spring and fall of the year.
• ARDOR Literary Magazine ARDOR Literary Magazine was founded in September 2012 as a non-profit electronic literary magazine. It is published online three times annually (January, May, September). ARDOR accepts fiction, nonfiction, short-short and poetry submissions through its online submission manager and is committed to paying every writer published in ARDOR Literary Magazine.
• ART TIMES Literary Journal and Resource for the Fine and Performing Arts ART TIMES Literary Journal and Resource for the Fine and Performing Arts
• ARTWIFE ARTWIFE exists to serve as an oasis of art and beauty. We have deep reverence for human expression and we demand attention to craft
• At Length At Length is a venue for ambitious, in-depth writing, music, photography, and art that are open to possibilities shorter forms preclude. As a print-friendly online magazine, we create ways for readers, listeners, and viewers
• Atlas and Alice Literary Magazine Our Name: A&A takes its name from the ATLAS and ALICE experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. These experiments look to explain some of the most fundamental characteristics of the universe.
• Avalon Literary Review The Avalon Literary Review welcomes work from both published and unpublished writers and poets. We accept submissions of poetry, short fiction and personal essays. The author's voice and point of view should be unique and clear. We seek pieces which spring from the author's life and experiences. Submissions which explore both the sweet and bitter ...
• B O D Y B O D Y is an international online literary journal. We publish the highest quality poetry and prose from emerging and established writers, both original work and translations.
• Bacopa Literary Review Bacopa Literary Review is an annual international print journal published by the Writers Alliance of Gainesville. We are seeking submissions in six categories this year: Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Humor, Formal Poetry, Free Verse Poetry, and Visual Poetry.
• Bad Version, The Launched in November 2011, The Bad Version is a new take on the literary-cultural magazine. Its name comes from the collaborative art of screenwriting, where the first attempt at a scene,
• BALLOONS Lit. Journal First established in 2014, BALLOONS Lit. Journal (BLJ) is a young-reader-oriented literary journal that is freely accessible to all by online reading with a fully edited ready-to-print pdf version downloadable for every issue.
• Baltimore Review The mission of The Baltimore Review is to showcase Baltimore as a literary hub of diverse writing and promote the work of emerging and established writers.
• Baltimore Review The mission of The Baltimore Review is to showcase Baltimore as a literary hub of diverse writing and promote the work of emerging and established writers. The Baltimore Review was founded by Barbara Westwood Diehl in 1996
• Barking Sycamores Who We Are The mission of Barking Sycamores is to publish poetry by emerging and established neurodivergent writers (autistic, ADHD, bipolar, synesthesia, etc.).
• Bayou Magazine Bayou Magazine is a biannual literary magazine with national circulation published by the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans. Each issue contains short fiction, non-fiction and poetry
• Belfry Literary Journal Belfry Literary Journal is now accepting submissions for their first ever print publication, as well as for their online supplement as well! The reading period is open from May 1 to July 31, with publication set for January of 2024.
• Bellevue Literary Review Bellevue Literary Review is a unique literary magazine that examines human existence through the prism of health and healing, illness and disease. In these universal
• Beloit Fiction Journal The Beloit Fiction Journal publishes the best in contemporary short fiction. Traditional and experimental narratives find a home in our pages. We publish new writers
• Bennington Review Bennington Review is a national biannual print journal of innovative, intelligent, and moving poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and film writing, housed at Bennington College.
• Berkeley Fiction Review Berkeley Fiction Review is an literary journal founded in 1981 and based at the University of California, Berkeley.
• Berkeley Poetry Review The Berkeley Poetry Review (BPR) is a journal published annually at the University of California, Berkeley. Founded in 1974, it has featured the work of new as well as established poets and writers
• Bewildering Stories > Bewildering Stories — known informally as “BwS” — is a weekly electronic publication featuring speculative fiction as well as non-fiction, namely poetry, articles, essays, reviews, and art.
• Bicoastal Review Bicoastal Review is a literary journal of poetry, creative nonfiction, interviews, art, and photography that aims to foster cross-genre conversations between
• Big Fiction Big Fiction celebrates the soul of the long story: generous, transportive, and a little wild. We're an independent journal publishing ambitious and delicious fiction twice a year, in hand-designed letterpress issues.
• Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley 8.5 x 5.5 perfectbound, color-cover, semi-annual publication that explores multidisciplinary issues and events concerning the 10-state area that borders the Mississippi River, from the United States/Canadian
• Black Denim Lit Black Denim Lit welcomes thoughtful writers, new and established. We are open to Genre fiction but favor "General", "Sci-Fi" and "Fantasy"... It's possible that we might also publish: Action/adventure, Western Mystery, Crime, Suspense or Thriller ...b
• Black Fox Literary Magazine, The The Black Fox Literary Magazine is an online quarterly publication featuring quality fiction of all styles and genres. Our Spring issue is published in March, the summer issue is published in June, the fall issue is published in September and the winter issue is published in December.
• Black Herald, The The Black Herald is an internationally-minded bilingual magazine (French-English) published in Paris. Co-edited by Blandine Longre and Paul Stubbs, the magazine’s only aim
• Black Scat Review Black Scat Review, a magazine of sublime art & literature, is published irregularly and features innovative fiction, art, erotica, photography, interviews, and excerpts from forthcoming Black Scat Books.
• Black Warrior Review Since 1974, Black Warrior Review has published the freshest voices in literature, from established and emerging talents alike. Each issue presents high quality poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including a chapbook by a nationally recognized poet.
• BLACKBERRY: a magazine BLACKBERRY: a magazine aims to be a premier literary magazine featuring black women writers and artists. Its goal is to expose readers to the diversity of the black woman?s experience and strengthen the black female voice in both
• Blackbird Poetry: send up to six poems at a time. Single-space, please; set your poem as you want it to appear on the printed page.
• Blast Furnace Blast Furnace is an independent literary publisher based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, still often referred to as the steel city. Blast furnaces were utilized for smelting
• Bleeding Lion: A Journal of Contemporary Arts & Letters The Bleeding Lion is a journal of contemporary arts and letters with a special focus on anatomy, cross-cultural, visual arts & diverse pieces. We especially
• Bloodletter Magazine Bloodletter is a feminist horror magazine showcasing personal and analytical perspectives on the horrific by women, trans, and non-binary writers.
• Blotter Magazine, The The Blotter Magazine exists to nurture underground, outsider literature and art and to provide it to a wide audience. We believe that the economic viability of good art
• Blotterature Blotterature is a brand new journal founded by four writers from Northwest Indiana. We accept a wide variety of prose, poetry, and artwork.
• Blue Collar Review Blue Collar Review (Journal of Progressive Working Class Literature), published quarterly, contains poetry, short stories, and illustrations "reflecting the working class experience--a broad range from the personal to the societal.
• Blue Mesa Review Blue Mesa Review is a literary magazine published online bi-annually. It is associated with the University of New Mexico.
• Blue Mountain Review, The The Blue Mountain Review stands as a distinguished literary journal launched in 2015 seeking to platform impactful stories told across
• Blue Villa Mag Blue Villa is more than just an online publication; it's a sanctuary for the arts, a digital canvas where creativity thrives, and individual stories unfold in a tapestry of human experiences. Our mission is crystal clear:
• Bombay Review, The The Bombay Review is a bi-monthly literary magazine publishing short fiction and poetry. The issues are online, and at the end of the year, the best of the published pieces
• Bookforum Magazine Since 1994, Bookforum has showcased daring writing about the important ideas of our time, with incisive essays on politics, pop culture, fiction, and the arts.
• Boston Accent Lit Based in Boston, MA and founded in February 2016 by Sarah A. O'Brien, Boston Accent Lit aims to showcase work that is daring and innovative, as well as providing a platform for underrepresented
• Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers Brain, Child treats motherhood as a subject worthy of literature. And in the best tradition of literature, it celebrates the diversity of mothers and their styles. Our essays and features address
• Brick, A Literary Journal Brick is an international literary magazine based in Toronto, Canada, and edited by Michael Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, Linda Spalding, Michael Helm, Rebecca Silver Slayter, and Esta Spalding.
• Bricolage Magazine Bricolage is a new arts and culture magazine based in India. We seek original, exciting works of art, literature and photograph for publication.
• Brilliant Flash Fiction Brilliant Flash Fiction delivers vibrant stories from around the world illustrated with dazzling photography. Contributors include established writers and talented newcomers.
• Broad River Review The Broad River Review is published every spring by the Department of English Language and Literature at Gardner-Webb University.
• Brownies’ Book, The An interactive quarterly multi-cultural literary children's magazine. The magazine was created to help black children have positive images whilst living with a racially hostile environment. It was designed for all children,
• Café Review, The The Café Review is a quarterly print volunteer publication based in Portland, Maine that has been publishing art, poetry and poetry book reviews for over 25 years. We forever search for new, strong voices in poetry and art, both in Maine and beyond Maine's borders.
• Call for submissions Call for submissions
• Cardiff Review, The The Cardiff Review is a digital and print literary magazine that publishes contemporary graduate writing. The magazine was launched to give talented students a platform
• Carolina Quarterly, The The Carolina Quarterly publishes a variety of poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and artwork three times a year. Approximately 1,000 copies are distributed to readers locally and to individual subscribers,
• Carve Magazine (11th) Est. in 2000, Carve magazine, named in honor of Raymond Carver, is a literary magazine publishing new short stories every quarter. Our stories are free to read online
• Cease, Cows At Cease, Cows we want to explore the contemporary, the strange, the big questions. We want to feel cultural pulses, expose mental arteries, bathe in both the sanguine and sanguinary. We want to publish prose and poems with fire and truth. Humans may be animals,
• Celestial Blood Literary Magazine Celestial Blood Literary Magazine was founded on April 20th, 2019 by four aspiring, young writers. We have all heard that poetry is the lifeblood of poets.
• Cemetery Dance > Cemetery Dance is the World Fantasy Award-winning magazine of horror, dark mystery, and suspense. Each issue is packed with 100 to 140 pages of short stories, articles, columns, interviews, news, and reviews!
• CHA: An Asian Literary Journal CHA: An Asian Literary Journal is the first and currently only Hong Kong-based online literary quarterly journal dedicated to publishing creative works ! from and about
• Chamber Magazine, The All rights remain with the author. There is no submission fee or submission period. The Chamber accepts submissions 24/7/365.
• Christmas Spirits Sharing ghost stories in the chilly darkness by firelight is a celebrated holiday tradition that's ready for a resurrection. Christmas Spirits
• Cleaver Magazine Cleave is a Janus verb, meaning both to stick tight and to fall away. A cleaver is the most broad-edged and brutally efficient kitchen knife, designed to be swung like a hammer for the most effective channel of force.
• Clementine (Unbound) Clementine (Unbound) publishes a small selection of poetry each month online. Print copies can be viewed or purchased from Issuu.com.
• CLOCKHOUSE Clockhouse accepts works of poetry, fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction, and dramatic works for stage or screen. We encourage submissions from both
• Coffin Bell Coffin Bell is a quarterly online journal of dark literature seeking poetry, flash fiction, short stories, and creative nonfiction exploring dark themes.
• Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing is a biannual, online publication that features work by both established and emerging writers
• CONSEQUENCE magazine CONSEQUENCE is a new literary magazine focusing on the culture of war in the twenty-first century. We believe that literature and art can advance the discourse a
• Contrary Magazine Contrary is a quarterly literary journal that publishes fiction, poetry, commentary, and especially work that dances contrarily across those categories. We also publish book reviews.
• Cosmic Horror Monthly > A monthly tome of tales, Lovecraftian, cosmic, and weird. Bold new horror delivered to your inbox or your mailbox. Horror: Short Stories
• Cowboy Jamboree We like old westerns. Hank Williams is one of our favorite writers. Used boots are better than new boots. At Cowboy Jamboree we promote
• Crab Fat Literary Magazine Crab Fat is interested in honesty, no matter how brutal it is. Don’t be afraid to use real language. Crab Fat is not interested in robotic academic language
• Creation and Criticism Creation and Criticism (CC), which is a quarterly international peer-reviewed refereed English e-journal, aims at providing an opportunity to the researchers and scholars for sharing their creative and critical
• Creative Nonfiction Creative Nonfiction is the voice of the genre. Published since 1994 as a journal, in 2010 CNF adopted a larger magazine format that combines new creative nonfiction about a variety of topics with columns and features about the art, business and craft of the genre. Recent issues have included interviews with or new work by ...
• Cumberland River Review The Cumberland River Review is an annual publication of new poetry, fiction, essays, and art. The journal is produced by the department of English at Trevecca Nazarene University, in
• CutBank We?re proud of CutBank?s thirty-nine years as Montana?s foremost literary magazine, founded in 1973 by the Creative Writing program at the University of Montana and helmed initially by favorite literary son William Kittredge.
• Dappled Things Dappled Things is a Catholic literary magazine, and this raises the question of what Catholic literature is in the first place.
• Dark Onus Lit Dark Onus Lit is a Philadelphia-based, volunteer-run, experimental micro-zine which publishes digital Issues of dark-themed artwork,
• Del Sol Review Del Sol Review is now accepting submissions for the Spring 2017 editions in general fiction, science fiction and fantasy, and poetry
• Delmarva Review Delmarva Review is an independent, nonprofit literary journal publishing short fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and short book reviews in print and digital editions annually.
• Denali Magazine (page links to site) DENALI Literary Arts Journal is a student run publication of Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. We publish once annually during the spring. Denali accepts original submissions of art,
• Dime Show Review Dime Show Review is born from a dream. Yes, an in-the-bed, under-the-covers dream. I saw a circus poster in a reference from the Library of Congress dating from the 1880’s
• drafthorse drafthorse is a biannual online publication of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, visual narrative, and other media art where work, occupation, labor?or lack of the same?is in some way
• Dreamers Creative Writing Dreamers is dedicated to all the different ways to write creatively from writing for writing’s sake, to using creative writing in academic research, to writing as therapy.
• Driftwood Press Driftwood Press is an online literary journal that publishes fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and visual art. We seek boundary-pushing, experimental
• Drunk Monkeys Drunk Monkeys is an online publication which features an eclectic mix of content, from original poetry and fiction to cultural and political essays, film and television reviews, and humor pieces.
• DUMAS de Demain: The French Literary Magazine At Dumas de Demain, we publish both online and print copies of French language stories, poems, fiction by young, emerging writers. We also celebrate and welcome French spoken word created by young artists
• Eastern Iowa Review Most journals and reviews want a story; we want magic in the language & fire in the flow, a show to impress over drama to incite. Well, a story is fine IF it's embedded
• Eclectica Magazine One of the earliest and therefore longest surviving ezines: considering pieces of fiction, poetry, essays, creative nonfiction, drama, book and movie reviews, travel writing, interviews and humor/satire
• El Portal Eastern New Mexico University’s literary magazine, El Portal, offers a venue for the work of writers, artists and photographers.
• Elan Literary Magazine The ?lan literary magazine is a publication of the Creative Writing program at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Fl. Its creation in 1986 was fueled by a passion for the written word that inspired students
• Elegant Literature Elegant Literature is a short fiction magazine and contest exclusive to new writers. We pay professional rates and help unpublished writers get their work into the world. We believe in helping aspiring writers break into the competitive fiction industry.
• Embark: A Literary Journal for Novelists Embark is a literary journal designed for novelists and featuring exclusively novel beginnings—those crucial first pages that must engage the reader’s attention and often receive more polishing than any
• eMerge Magazine Discover the Magic of Words with eMerge! eMerge is an ad-free online literary magazine, powered solely by the generous support of our readers. As a proud 501(c)(3) organization
• Empty Mirror Empty Mirror was established in 2000 as a source of books and information on the Beat Generation and small-press poetry. Over time we broadened its scope.
• Encephalon Journal New Latin for “the brain,” Encephalon is a youth-led art and literary journal. We are devoted to honoring the voice, craft, and originality of aspiring writers,
• Epiphany, a literary Journal Epiphany is committed to publishing literary work in which form is as valued as content. We look for writing, wherever it may fall on the spectrum from experimental to traditional, that is thoroughly realized not only in its vision but also in its commitment to artistry. We are especially open to writers whose explorations of ...
• Eratio (links to site) Eratio publishes poetry in the postmodern idioms with an emphasis on the intransitive. Each issue also comes as a PDF do! cument
• Eratio Poetry Journal E·ratio is reading for issue 19, the spring 2014 issue. Please send cover letter, bio and poems together in one attachment. When saving your document,
• Escape into Life (links to site) Literary writing webzine features Outsider Art and poetry submissions, along with a collection of literary essays and podcast feeds
• Eucalyptus Lit Eucalyptus Lit is a quarterly magazine of poetry, prose, and artwork. We are looking for searing, electric work
• Eunoia Review Eunoia Review is an online literary journal committed to sharing the fruits of 'beautiful thinking'. Each day, we publish one new piece of writing for your reading pleasure. We believe that Eunoia Review can and should be a home for all sorts of writing, and we welcome submissions from writers of all ages and backgrounds.
• EWR: Short Stories We are a "new" publication. EWR: Short Stories started publishing in the fall. The publication is on Every Writer's Resource.com a site that has been publishing for 6 years. It is one of the largest writer's websites in the world. It has over 1.5 million unique visits per year. EWR: Short Stories tries to publish ...
• EX/POST MAGAZINE We are a nonprofit literary and arts magazine dedicated to the frontier of experimentation. Here at EX/POST, we aren't interested in reactive action so much as perceptive thought
• Exposition Review Exposition Review is an annual, independent literary journal dedicated to publishing narratives by new, emerging, and established writers in multiple genres and forms.
• F(r)iction F(r)iction is a triannual publication that boasts work from both industry legends and emerging writers. We accept short fiction, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, comics, and poetry submissions all year round, and also host contests featuring guest judges
• Fahmidan Journal Founded in the Summer of 2020 by Ranna Kisswani & A.R. Arthur (formerly A.R. Salandy), Fahmidan Journal hopes to bring out diverse voices
• FANGORIA Magazine > FANGORIA Magazine has a 40+ year legacy of bringing fans the best horror coverage out there, and it all started in the summer of 1979 when issue #1 first appeared on newsstands. The publication has evolved over four decades and over 350 issues, but the original spirit remains. Horror: No unsolicited. 
• Fears Magazines > Fears Magazine - The best in Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Genre News and entertainment. Featuring movie interviews, news, dvd & film reviews, book reviews, and music reviews
• Fiction International Fiction International is the only literary journal in the United States emphasizing formal innovation and progressive politics. It features a wide variety of fiction, nonfiction, indeterminate
• Fictive Dream Fictive Dream, established in May 2016, is an English language online literary magazine dedicated to the short story. It is a well-respected outlet for short story writers from all over the world including the UK,
• filling station filling Station seeks experimental fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and art. Anything suprising, unpredictable, innovative, or unique. We accept pieces that experiment with form or content, or both.
• Fjords Review Fjords is an arts and literary review for the 21st century reader. The twice yearly magazine features new visual art, poetry, and short stories alongside translations and reviews.
• Flash Fiction Online Flash Fiction Online is a monthly, online magazine publishing literary/mainstream/genre fiction. We pay professional rates and are SFWA affiliated. Both original and reprints are considered.
• Flint Hills Review Flint Hills Review is an annual publication with a national circulation. We publish work with a particular interest in region, including regions of place, regions of ethnicity,
• Floyd County Moonshine A bi-annual publication, Floyd County Moonshine has been in production over five years, publishing a variety of home-grown Appalachian writers in addition to writers from across the country.
• Foreword Reviews Foreword Reviews is committed to shining a light on great stories from independent storytellers, writing objective, honest reviews of their books, and connecting them with readers who sh
• Fourteen Hills Since its inception in 1994, Fourteen Hills has held an impressive reputation among international literary magazines for publishing the highest-quality innovative poetry,
• Foxes Dancing Around Welcome to Foxes Dancing Around! Here, we want to give a welcoming environment to writers of all kinds, especially writers who have never
• Fruitslice Fruitslice is a quarterly publication available both in print and e-book format. We are set to launch Winter 2023. Each issue is curated around a theme. For our first release, we are focusing on “Firsts”.
• FULL FORCE Fiction FULL FORCE is a new independent magazine looking to publish cool and weird stories, art, and comics
• Ginosko Literary Journal Accepting short fiction & poetry, creative nonfiction, interviews, social justice concerns, spiritual insights for Ginosko Literary Journal. Editorial lead time 1-2 months; accept simultaneous
• Gold Man Review Gold Man Review, an annual literary magazine produced in Salem, Oregon, under the umbrella of Gold Man Publishing, is aimed at serving our community of authors and artists.
• Gone Lawn "Gone Lawn seeks to explore and advance the growth of a new literary intention befitting our new century. In particular we seek innovative, nontraditional and daring works, both narrative and poetic,
• Gore Noir Magazine Gore Noir Magazine covers Horror art, horror models, tattoos, photography, special effects, celebrities, music, etc.
• Grain Grain, the journal of eclectic writing, is a literary quarterly that publishes engaging, eclectic, and challenging writing and art by Canadian and international writers and artists. Grain is published
• Gravel Literary Journal Gravel Literary Journal is a new online literary journal created by University of Arkansas-Monticello MFA students.
• Great Ape The Great Ape pokes its head through the trees. It’s watching, waiting to see what you’ll do. The Great Ape suffers fools gladly, so be foolish
• Griffith REVIEW Griffith REVIEW celebrates good writing and promotes public debate. It steps back from the issues of the day and gives writers the space to grow on the page. Essays reflect on the underlying significance of events and trends, explain the details that get lost in the news and examine the unintended consequences of public policy. ...
• Grist: The Journal for Writers Founded in 2007 by graduate students in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Tennessee, Grist: The Journal for Writers is a resource for the discussion
• Hakkyu Hakkyu, a name derived from the Japanese word meaning "to spread," embodies our mission to amplify the voices of the young and emerging writers
• High Desert Journal High Desert Journal is a literary and visual art magazine dedicated to further understanding the people, places and issues of the interior West. Its pages help define this region in literary
• Home Planet News Home Planet News was founded by Enid Dame & Donald Lev in 1979. Based in New York City, it appeared three times a year in a 24-page newsprint format
• Howl Howl, founded in 2013, is an online literary arts magazine run and operated by dedicated, passionate, and talented students of Deltona High School
• Illuminarium Chronicles Illuminarium Chronicles is an international literary magazine that was created to be a bridge to freedom of expression and aims to publish creative
• Indiana Review Now in its thirty-eighth year of publication, Indiana Review is a non-profit literary magazine dedicated to showcasing the talents of emerging and established writers.
• Inklette Magazine Inklette is a not-for-profit, online literary magazine helmed by emerging artists and writers from all over. Inklette believes in the ability of art and literature to strike our consciousness
• ionosphere Our literary journal, ionosphere, focuses on the relationship between science, technology, and the human experience. We seek poetry submissions that explore
• James Dickey Review Though attempting to maintain an artistic and intellectual connection to the work of James Dickey, the  James Dickey Review accepts all manner of poetry, nonfiction, scholarly articles, and book reviews. The journal is published twice yearly, is assigned International Standard
• James Gunn’s Ad Astra The Center for the Study of Science Fiction (CSSF), in association with the University of Kansas, announces the launch of James Gunn's Ad Astra, an online resource for authors, scholars
• Journal of Compressed Creative Arts (Matter Press) Matter Press is a community-based, non-profit 501(c)(3) literary press that publishes an online literary journal (The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts), manages a compressed prose and poetry chapbook contest, and supports a regular reading series. Matter Press offers internships to Rosemont College MFA in Creative Writing & M.A. in Publishing alums and degree-candidates as submission ...
• JuxtaProse Literary Magazine Founded in 2015, JuxtaProse is an Idaho-based literary magazine that publishes fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, art, and photography from around the world.
• KaleidoScript Magazine KaleidoScript Magazine is a captivating literary haven where storytelling takes centre stage. With a mission to inspire, uplift, and connect, each edition unfolds a kaleidoscope
• Kathai Literary Journal The Kathai Literary Journal was started by Sanjana Senthil in 2022. It aims to curate art and writing from all young creators
• KUDU KUDU Website https://kudujournal.wordpress.com From the Editor KUDU is an online biannual literary journal devoted to the creative work of South Africans. The name KUDU, a Khoikhoi term, was chosen to honour the Khoisan peoples, the first indigenous peoples of South Africa. KUDU aims to be a platform for the multifarious creative voice of South Africa and to represent the ...
• Lifelines: Dartmouth Medical School Literary Journal Lifelines is a journal published by Darmouth Medical School and publishes original and unpublished short stories, non-fiction, poetry, and artwork for our 2011 issue. We are a literary and art
• Lines + Stars Lines + Stars began as a means of establishing a new creative forum in Washington, D.C., a city that all-too-often coasts solely on its more mechanistic pursuits. While many of our contributors hail from the D.C. area, we've also expanded our writer-base to include national and international voices.
• Litbreak Magazine Litbreak is an online literary journal that is published by Jason Chambers and edited by Dennis Haritou. Our signature photography is by Jason Rice.
• Literary Heist Literary Heist is a quarterly magazine that wants to democratize the literary and art world. It is looking to showcase good work that comes from new and existing writers and artists.
• Literary Yard The Literary Yard invites stories, articles on literature, literary criticism, opinion articles on literature
• Litro Magazine LitroUSA is as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, fosters a national community for innovative writing and creative works. We connect cultures, encourage dialogues via technology and arts, and ensure literature’s prominence in popular culture by backing writers and artists.
• Little Leaf Literary Journal Little Leaf Literary Journal is a new online literary journal, founded in 2024. We publish prose, poetry, and pieces that cross the boundaries of both genres.
• Little Patuxent Review Little Patuxent Review (LPR) is a biannual print journal with an associated blog that features writers and artists from the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond. It was founded in 2006 by a group of local writers
• Lotus-eater Lotus-eater is a literary magazine based in Rome. We are looking for daring, unusual, and inspiring writing. Our ambition is two-fold: to publish high-quality poetry and prose in the English language
• Lucky Jefferson Lucky Jefferson is an award-winning literary journal that generates interactive conversations around poetry and art by reforming the way journals are produced and shared with readers. Lucky Jefferson is proud to feature poets who have never been published, marginalized perspectives, and those who sought to pursue poetry later in life.
• Lucky Lizard Journal Lucky Lizard Journal was founded in 2023 with the purpose of being a competitive, egalitarian poetry journal that allows
• Lunaris Review Art is escapist, and that is its splendour. If the freedom of mind and soul is valued and we remain devout seekers of freedom; it then becomes our duty to escape through
• Make Money with your Literary Magazine Make Money with your Literary Magazine Do you want to make money with your literary magazine? Are you working hours and hours on the web for free? Publishing a literary magazine is not easy. It may be your passion, but if you're not making money with your website, your passion can only take you so far. ...
• Manzano Mountain Review Manzano Mountain Review is an online literary journal based in New Mexico and loosely affiliated with the University of New Mexico-Valencia. MMR was founded in 2017 and publishes issues in November and sometimes May.
• Meat for Tea: The Valley Review Meat for Tea: The Valley Review was founded by Alexandra Wagman and Elizabeth MacDuffie. We are a non academic affiliated publication committed to featuring and publishing the works of artists and writers in the Pioneer River Valley and beyond.
• Michigan Quarterly Review MQR is an eclectic, interdisciplinary journal of arts and culture that seeks to combine the best of poetry,
• Midwest Review The Midwest Review is an annual literary and arts magazine published in Madison Wisconsin, featuring the Midwest in work by writers, photographers and artists
• Modern Literature Modern Literature (www.modernliterature.org) is an online literary journal that has an ambitious aim of blooming into an international literary hub for established, emerging and new literary talent.
• Mojo Mojo is the graduate-run online literary journal from Wichita State University?s MFA program. We publish in the Fall and Spring. All selected work is considered for inclusion in our annual
• Moonday Mag Established in 2023 and inspired by the founder’s dream journal, Moonday Mag is a quarterly art and literary magazine
• Moss The Pacific Northwest is home to a thriving, vibrant literary culture. Following in a long tradition of finely crafted regional writing that is at once lyrical and gritty
• Mud Season Review Mud Season Review is an international literary journal run by members of the Burlington Writers Workshop, a free writing workshop based in Vermont
• MUSE INDIA, the literary eJournal Muse India is devoted to Indian literature and showcases Indian Writing in English as well as translations from all Indian language literatures. Each Issue focuses on one of the Indian language literature.
• n+1 Writers interested in contributing to n+1 should note that we come out only three times each year, and that most if not all of the slots available for a given issue will have been filled by the editors many months before publication. That said, if you would like to brave the odds, the best submissions ...
• Narrative Magazine Edited by Carol Edgarian and Tom Jenks two well-established editors, the publication is making a real run at being a “big time” literary magazine on the web
• Nat. Brut Nat. Brut is an online multimedia art and literary magazine released free to the world twice a year. We aim to provide quality, engaging, dynamic, inspiring
• New Feathers Anthology We believe art is a means of exploration and understanding, a way to play, to discover, and to communicate ideas
• New Millennium Writings New Millennium Writings is an award-winning literary journal founded in 1996 in Knoxville., TN, by prize-winning journalist Don Williams.
• New Plains Review New Plains Review provides an outlet for the creative and intellectual efforts of the academic community. Dedicated to fostering and maintaining the written word, New Plains Review gives a collective presentation
• Nighthawk Literature Sometimes, our most vulnerable and bizarre ideas surface during the night, while the hours run over our eyes and leap into the morning. Nighthawk Literature is here to discover the vulnerable, the bizarre, and the unusual.
• October Hill Magazine October Hill Magazine set sail on its maiden voyage as a non-profit magazine in the Spring of 2017 in New York City. The magazine grew out of the Literary Lights Writer’s Group,
• Otis Nebula Otis Nebula is a digital literary magazine currently in its tenth year. It publishes incandescent, substantial work that operates on its own terms. The focus is on poetry, though the editors are always on the lookout for brazen short fiction, crispy creative non-fiction, rocking reviews
• Oxford American The Oxford American is a national magazine dedicated to featuring the very best in Southern writing while documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. Billed as "The
• Painted Bride Quarterly Painted Bride Quarterly, established in Philadelphia in 1973, is one of the country’s longest running literary magazines. PBQ is a community-based, independent, non-profit literary magazine published quarterly online and annually in print, making it accessible to a broad and diverse audience.
• Panel Panel Magazine reflects contemporary literature that is being produced in Central and Eastern Europe, and is written in English or translated into English.
• Papercuts Papercuts is the bi-annual literary magazine of Desi Writers Lounge – an online workshop for writers of South Asian
• Pictura Journal Pictura Journal began in a dim midwestern kitchen during tornado season. A handful of storms and years and missteps later,
• Pithead Chapel Pithead Chapel is a small, independent and volunteer-run journal out of Michigan?s Upper Peninsula. At present, we?re only a monthly electronic journal; however, that could change over time to include printed issues.
• Please See Me Please See Me, an online literary journal dedicated to highlighting creative writing and artistic expression through photography and digital media by patients
• Ploughshares Ploughshares has published quality literature since 1971. Our award-winning literary journal is published four times a year; our lively literary blog publishes new writing daily. Since 1989, we have been based at Emerson College in downtown Boston
• Plume Publishing the best national and international poetry: recent authors include Alicia Ostriker, Amy Gerstler, Stuart Dybek, Carl Dennis, Denise Duhamel, Terese Svoboda, G.C. Waldrep,
• Polyphony H.S. polyphony-11cover2Website http://www.polyphonyhs.com From the Editor We are an international student-run literary magazine for high school writers and editors. We have an editorial panel of some 150 high school students
• Pomegranate London The Pomegranate London is a biannual printed art and literary magazine featuring short stories, poems and essays on artists. Founded in July 2020, The Pomegranate London seeks to publish and promote innovative, fresh and experimental new work from established and emerging writers and artists from the UK and internationally. The magazine may also
• Popshot Magazine Popshot is an illustrated literary magazine that publishes short stories, flash fiction, and poetry from the literary new blood. The magazine is published bi-annually, releasing a new issue every April and October.
• Posit Posit is an online journal which publishes four issues per year of poetry, prose, and visual art. We feature a dynamic, accomplished, sophisticated work that may be eclectic in style
• Postcard Poems and Prose Who are we: Postcard Poems and Prose Imagine a painter, photographer, novelist, and poet all running willy-nilly and meeting full-speed. That collision is Postcard Poems and Prose .
• Power Cut Delve into the seedy badlands of 20th century pop culture with the devil’s music, books, and films. Power Cut is an innovative new bi-annual literary magazine
• Prism Review We hope to read your very best - and more than that we're excited to read it, and we want more, we hope for more, we quietly plead for/demand more
• Protean Magazine Protean Magazine is a non-profit leftist publication that produces an annual print magazine and publishes online content year-round.
• Psychopomp Magazine The Psychopomp Magazine staff is committed to publishing original fiction that dares to redefine traditional storytelling and genre borders. While we like stories
• Radar Poetry Radar Poetry is an electronic journal published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. We publish poems from both established and emerging writers and welcome international submissions.
• Rattle Rattle’s mission is to promote the practice of poetry. We feel that poetry lost its way in the 20th century, becoming so obscure and esoteric that mainstream readers have forgotten how moving language alone can be
• Riot Material Riot Material is a new online cultural and literary magazine. We are a Los Angeles-based, but we are global in our vision and expect to highlight the best of the written word from around the world
• RipRap Journal Welcome to RipRap, a literary journal designed and produced annually by students in the Master of Fine Arts, Creative Writing program at California State University Long Beach (CSULB).
• RockPaperPoem RockPaperPoem presents a uniquely blended mix of poetry. We're grounded in imagery, emotion and humanity, but we also showcase varied
• Room Magazine Canada's oldest literary journal by and about women. Room is a space where women can speak, connect, and showcase their creativity. Each quarter we publish
• Rowayat Rowayat is a literary journal emerging from Egypt. We feature writers living in Egypt, or have lived in Egypt in the past.
• Ruminate RUMINATE is a quarterly magazine of short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, and visual art that resonate with the complexity and truth of the Christian faith. Each
• Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art Published by the students of the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of South Florida, Saw Palm captures the unique experience of Florida life
• Scarlet Leaf Review Mission: to find a niche in the rich literary world and once we have done that to let the writers and artists, either old or young, have their say; to promote various
• Segullah "Segullah is a literary journal and blog designed to encourage literary and artistic talent, provoke thought and promote greater understanding and faith
• Sequestrum Founded by graduates of Iowa's major creative writing programs—Iowa State University and the prestigious University of Iowa—Sequestrum has faithfully published award-winning writers and new voices alike for our 1,000+ monthly readership
• SFL Style magazine SFL Style Magazine is the lifestyle magazine for South Florida visitors as well as local growing population. We deliver the latest local trends in fashion, beauty, art, travel, real estate
• Silver Apples Magazine Silver Apples Magazine is a new Irish e-zine founded by friends and long-time collaborators Alex Dunne and Gráinne O’Brien
• Sixth Finch We are committed to bringing the best in contemporary art and poetry to our readers at no cost. Poems from Sixth Finch have appeared in The Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize.
• Sky Island Journal Sky Island Journal is an independent, free-access, online literary journal with an international reach; we are dedicated to discovering, curating, and publishing the finest original poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction. Your best writing deserves an
• Slightly Foxed In case you haven't come across it, Slightly Foxed is a rather different kind of book review ? more like a bookish friend, really, than a literary periodical. Companionable and unstuffy, each
• Small World City Small World City is a Dhaka, Bangladesh-based online literary magazine looking for speculative stories—in the very different forms they take. We are looking
• So to Speak: a feminist journal of language and arts We are a literary journal that seeks submissions from diverse perspectives and backgrounds that focus on intersectional feminism.We look for work that addresses issues
• SoFloPoJo- South Florida Poertry Journal We publish quarterly - poetry from all over the world- living in or writing about Florida is NOT a requirement. We want lyrical, mystical, magical, whimsical, finely crafted poems, pantoums and villanelles, prose-poems, "voices from the fierce, intangible world".
• SORTES SORTES is a spinning collection of stories, poems, songs, and illustrations to help while away the wintery June nights. It’s an oddball grabbag wunderkammer mixtape offering distraction a
• Soundings East Soundings East is the literary journal of Salem State University, published annually with support from the Center for Creative and Performing Arts
• Southern Writers Magazine We promote and highlight authors and their books. Since inception we have promoted over 850 authors. We let writers and readers come behind the scenes of successful
• Spadina Literary Review Spadina Literary Review is an online literary magazine based in Toronto, Canada, with an international readership. The magazine was launched in 2011 and after a few years of irregular appearances is now publishing every two months.
• Spark: A Creative Anthology Our goal was to establish a high-quality, paying market where emerging authors and gain professional experience being published alongside known and respected writers.
• Spectrum Magazine Spectrum Magazine was launched in 2013 by Mercedes Lucero and founded on the belief that everyone has the ability to bring something lovely
• Speculative 66 Born September 6th, 2016, Speculative 66 is a (mostly) monthly journal of 66-word stories and poems from the speculative realm. We feature science fiction
• Spoke Journal Spoke is a literary, art, and audio publication cultivating an outlet for original and finely crafted ideas. Art originates in process, the interaction between ideas and environment. What is this environment, this place? What is its art, its identity?
• Spray Paint Magazine Spray Paint Magazine is an independent online literary magazine aiming at giving artists a voice. It was established in early 2022
• Spry Literary Journal We envision Spry as a literary journal that features undiscovered and established writers' concise, experimental, hybrid, modern, vintage or just plain vulnerable writing. We see this as a place
• Stanza Cannon As a free-to-submit, free-to-listen literary quarterly dedicated solely to audio submissions, Stanza Cannon enhances humanity’s age-old tradition of oral poetry
• Steel Toe Review STR has been around for about a year and a half. We publish an issue online about every other month. We recently printed an anthology featuring the best pieces from our first year online,
• Still Point Arts Quarterly Still Point Arts Quarterly is a truly beautiful and engaging art and literary journal. It was founded in 2011 by Shanti Arts, a press based in Brunswick, Maine, that also publishes books and is dedicated to honoring the timeless connections among nature, art, and spirit.
• Stinkwaves Magazine looking for YA/middle-grade fiction, poetry, illustrations
• Stone Highway Review I get excited by writing that tries new things. When a writer can make that comparison that I wish I had come up with first. When the poem isn't trying too hard and somehow makes me feel. When a piece is so lovely and gosh darn sensitive to human nature that I can't help but ...
• Story Story is a tri-annual print publication devoted to the complex and diverse world of narrative with a focus on fiction and nonfiction. Formerly a publication of York College, Story has reorganized as a non-profit, independent arts organization based in Columbus, Ohio.
• Story Club Magazine Story Club Magazine is a literary journal for literary performance. We publish visceral nonfiction that has first been performed in front of a live audience
• Story Monsters Ink Story Monsters Ink, a literary resource for teachers, librarians, and parents, is an award-winning magazine that covers the latest news on debut books and products, celebrity and independent author profiles
• StoSo Press Welcome to StoSo Press, where the realms of imagination come to life. Founded in 2023 as a passion project by writer and artist Gabriel De Leon who has
• Straight Forward: A Poetry Journal Poetry: There are no restrictions on length or form, but we are looking for poetry that is clear and honest. We will consider previously published writing as along as the earlier publication information is provided at the time of submission. Essays and Blogs: In addition to poetry we will also consider guest blog entries and ...
• Streetcake We publish experimental poetry and short fiction every 3 months. We like work with an experimental bent and do not generally publish more traditional forms.
• Streetlight Magazine Streetlight is an online, non-profit magazine dedicated to publishing new and noteworthy works of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and art. The magazine began life as an annual print publication featuring works from central Virginia
• STRIKE Magazine STRIKE Magazine is a completely independent, community supported, working class political art and culture magazine in South Texas.
• Subnivean Subnivean, SUNY Oswego’s literary publication, was established in 2020. In 2021, it was recognized for its excellence as one of just four national Firecracker Awards finalists in the category of “Magazines: Best Debut” by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.
• Sunspot Literary Journal Sunspot Literary Journal speaks truth to power by drawing on the power of every human being. The publication is dedicated to diverse voices in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, scripts, screenplays, photography, and art from around the world. Since launching in January of 2019, Sunspot has amplified multinational voices from around the world. New works have been ...
• Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations. An online literary magazine featuring contemporary Surrealist Fiction / Poetry / Art
• Suspense Magazine > Suspense Publishing continues to expand its reputation and influence in the publishing industry, offering some of the best titles in the suspense, thriller, mystery, and horror genres
• Swamp Biscuits & Tea Swamp Biscuits and Tea is a quarterly journal of highly imaginative short fiction. Though magic realism is our primary focus, our journal strives to coalesce an interesting variety of styles
• Swamppink formally Crazyhorse Recent poems from Crazyhorse were selected for reprint in The Best American Poetry 2008 and 2007 and The Pushcart Prize anthology, recent fiction in The Best American Short Stories 2008. Richard Jackson's poem
• Synaesthesia Magazine We are a literary and arts magazine run by two passionate editors. Our magazine aims to engage writers and artists in an exploration of the senses, publishing photography, artwork, poetry and short stories.
• Syzygy Poetry Journal Syzygy Poetry is about but not quite limited to (1.) Heavenly bodies, or Astronomy. an alignment of three celestial objects,as the sun, the earth, and either the moon
• Talking Writing Talking Writing is an online literary magazine that supports writers and those interested in literature by encouraging creative discussion of the writing process. Each issue of Talking Writing
• Tallow Eider Quarterly Tallow Eider Quarterly is based out of Olympia, WA and showcases the most innovative art and writing available. We welcome poetry, art and fiction submissions year-round.
• Tangled Web Magazine Tangled Web Magazine is a speculative fiction and Tartan Noir magazine featuring dark, twisty stories that explore the tangled web of our lives. We love stories with a sense of intrigue, stories that make us feel, that challenge us,   Submission Guidelines  Genre: Fiction, Speculative
• Tattoo Highway (Publishing Paused) Tattoo Highway is an online journal of poetry, literary fiction and nonfiction, original graphics and photography. Most issues have a theme, which may be interpreted literally or (very) loosely. 2017: "Down the Rabbit Hole."
• Tethered by Letters Tethered by Letters is a nonprofit literary journal dedicated to cultivating writers of all ages, backgrounds, education, or genres. Our mission is fulfilled through the three avenues for writing success:
• The Anti-Misogyny Club The Anti-Misogyny Club Website https://www.theantimisogynyclub.com From the Editors The Anti-Misogyny has just launched as an online gallery of feminist art and writing, and this summer, will launch a bi-monthly journal of the same. Our mission is to use art and writing to resist misogyny, because we’re tired of the misogyny our culture is drenched in: tired of rape being ...
• The Cincinnati Review The Cincinnati Review draws together within its pages the finest creative and critical work from across the country. We provide a venue for writers of any background, at any point in their literary
• The Citron Review The Citron Review is an online literary journal created and edited by alumni of the esteemed Antioch University Los Angeles M.F.A. Program. We seek submissions of resonant beauty in the form of micro-fiction, flash fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis.
• The Closed Eye Open The Closed Eye Open is an art & literature website that was started as an exploration of consciousness. Our main goal is to feature a wide range of art forms that connect in some way with this pursuit.
• The College Review The College Review is an online publication that focuses on bringing new and fresh writers into the spotlight, with a special emphasis on those currently in college or recently graduated. Established in March of 2013,
• The Columbia Review The Columbia Review is the oldest college literary magazine in the nation, publishing its first issue in 1815.
• The Common Finding the extraordinary in the common has long been the mission of literature. Inspired by this mission and the role of the town common, a public gathering place for the display and exchange of ideas,
• The Commonline Journal The Commonline Journal publishes accessible literature, critisism and art apropos the common line. Originally titled the "The Commonline Project," The Commonline Journal was
• The Conium Review We still believe in the allure of "new book smell," and we are dedicated to producing high-quality print editions of each issue. The publication itself is print-only, but we augment our traditionalist methods with podcasts, social networking, and online reviews. We seek to revive and redefine small press publishing, supporting independent literature in ...
• The Cossack Review Since 2012, TCR has published meaningful works of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, as well as literature in translation from around the world. We print writers
• The Creativity Webzine We are seeking new talent and new authors. "The Creativity Webzine" is a new journal that focuses on all things original.
• The Cumberland River Review The Cumberland River Review is a quarterly online publication of new poetry, fiction, essays, and art. The journal is produced by the department of English at Trevecca Nazarene University, in Nashville, Tennessee, and welcomes submissions from both national and international writers and artists.
• The Curie Review The Curie Review is a literary magazine that is passionate about empowering the next generation of future leaders in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics).
• The Dawn Review The Dawn Review is a quarterly print and online literary magazine that celebrates diverse voices and perspectives.
• The Death Cross Monk This is a multi-media art journal. We accept audio, visual, poetry, prose, and film submissions. Our first online issue features a range of established artists and also new and emerging artists. All ranges of artists are encouraged to apply.
• The Digital Americana Magazine The original tablet literary magazine. The Digital Americana Magazine (DAM) launched as the first literary magazine made exclusively for tablets after having been accepted and made
• The Drum Literary Magazine The Drum is a non-profit online magazine dedicated to literature in audio form. We publish short fiction and essays from emerging and established writers who value the power of writing out loud.
• The Ekphrastic Review The Ekphrastic Review is an online journal devoted entirely to writing inspired by visual art. Our objective is to promote ekphrastic writing, promote art
• The Ellis Review The Ellis Review was established as a platform through which emerging writers may have their voices magnified. Inspired by our namesake Ellis Island, we specialize in pulling forth gems from frigid ocean waters; once a week, every week
• The English Chicago Review Founded in 2012, The English Chicago Review is a quarterly small-press poetry journal based in the north of England.
• the evermore review the evermore review is seeking submissions for its first issue. This journal is the Editor-in-Chief's master's thesis, which she will defend in early December 2022. the evermore review is an online short fiction journal seeking submissions containing the essence of Taylor Swift's album "evermore."
• The Fat City Review The Fat City Review is an online magazine that publishes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and visual art.
• The Fiction Desk Based in the UK, The Fiction Desk publishes a quarterly anthology of new short fiction from around the world.
• The FictionWeek Literary Review The FictionWeek Literary Review is published online twice a year, spring! and fall by FictionWeek.com. We are now accepting submissions for the Spring 2010 Issue. The FictionWeek Literary Review is a venue for innovative fiction and poetry. We intend to primarily publish writing that breaks new ground by finding new ways to tell a story. ...
• The FictionWeek Literary Review The FictionWeek Literary Review has been publishing fiction and poetry twice a year since 2009. We are looking for only the finest literature, and we publish only a few stories and poems each issue.
• The Florida Review Welcome Welcome to The Florida Review, the literary journal published twice yearly by the University of Central Florida. Our artistic mission is to publish the best poetry
• The Found Poetry Review The Found Poetry Review is a quarterly online poetry journal celebrating the poetry in the existing and the everyday. We publish found poetry, centos, erasure poems and other forms that incorporate elements of existing texts. We also publish photography that captures the visual poetry found in people and places.
• The Four Cornered Universe The Four Cornered Universe is an online journal which is dedicated to publishing high-quality fiction, poetry, and nonfiction essays. We publish 2-5 new pieces on Mondays. Submissions are considered on a rolling basis, and you should expect to hear back from us within a month. We accept previously unpublished authors as well as established ones. ...
• The Future Fire Online magazine of socio-political speculative fiction: Feminist SF; Queer SF; Eco SF.
• The Gettysburg Review The Gettysburg Review is published by Gettysburg College. The Review has been publishing for since. The Gettysburg Review is a quarterly publications
• The Globe Review This literary journal strives to create an accepting and diverse community of writers based on the core values of tolerance and creativity.
• The Golden Key The Golden Key is a bi-annual journal of speculative and literary writing inspired by the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale of the same name. The Grimms chose ?The Golden Key? to end
• The Golden Triangle The Golden Triangle publishes fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. At The Golden Triangle we are attempting to keep the writing life alive in a world that is severely lacking. You can expect to find fresh, risk-taking, original poetry, fiction, and non-fiction coupled with intelligent design.
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Literature and Belief

The courageous grace of Jamie Quatro.

Image: David Gylland

In a 2012 New York Times essay, Paul Elie laments the absence of compelling portraiture of religious belief in American fiction. Christianity in particular, he argues, gets treated in fiction as “something between a dead language and a hangover.” Elie’s dispirited essay concludes with a wish: “You hope to find the writer who can dramatize belief the way it feels in your experience, at once a fact on the ground and a sponsor of the uncanny, an account of our predicament that still and all has the old power to persuade. You look for a story or a novel where the writer puts it all together.”

One reason putting it all together is so hard to do is that the writer who has actual religious beliefs can’t use fiction to shore up those beliefs or simply confess them. The novel isn’t a sermon or a hymn. Even a novel as filled with love and religious life as Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (2004) is a portrait of generational tension as well as a kind of wondrous benediction in the face of that tension. To read or write literary fiction as a believer is to put belief at risk, to submit it to pressures it may or may not withstand. Without that risk, fiction becomes allegory, or maybe honest sentiment—comfort food—but not what Elie called for, an account of our predicament.

The most convincing stretch of contemporary fiction that dramatizes belief, for me, is a portion of the unfinished novel The Pale King (2011) by David Foster Wallace. In these pages (originally published separately as the story “Good People”), Wallace presents a young believer who is trapped inside a dilemma that calls for a maturity he just doesn’t have. He wants to do the right, faithful thing, but he confesses himself “two-hearted,” and the story ends with a series of hanging questions rather than a confident resolution. These pages are lyrical, powerful, nuanced, and full of life suffused with religious belief. What they don’t offer is that same faith triumphing. If Wallace has put it all together here, it’s by putting so much pressure on religious belief that we wonder if it’s going to completely come apart. But a faith that comes apart is no longer faith. Fiction that describes lost belief pays tribute to its influence but not to its value.

To read or write literary fiction as a believer is to put belief at risk.

Clearly, literary portraits of religious belief can be done and have been done. Elie’s lament is that most of the compelling attempts are behind us now, not all around us. Eighty-year-old Marilynne Robinson still hosts the high table for anyone trying to embody religious belief in fiction. In the last two decades, instead of easing into retirement, she has offered four volumes of essays (full of theology and cosmology and religious defence), four novels that form a Midwestern saga about the country and the role of belief, and, just this year, a book-length meditation on Genesis . Elie calls Robinson’s Gilead a “tract for the times” while emphasizing that the novel embodies a representative belief from an earlier era, not our own. I suppose a similar qualification would apply to Denis Johnson’s magisterial Vietnam apocalypse, Tree of Smoke (2007), whose title comes from the Old Testament, and whose cast of characters includes a missionary reading Calvin and a Catholic priest accused of gunrunning. The same backward glance describes Ron Hansen’s portrait of winsome nuns swept away on a nineteenth-century shipwreck in Exiles (2008) and the seventies youth group in Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads (2021).

Religion in some capacity was an anchoring experience in a world that once was. To account for that world required accounting for religious belief in ways that, reading fiction today, we don’t feel we have to. Belief today is an eccentricity, or it’s wrapped in the banners and battle flags of political commitments, or it’s an unthreatening private experience—a nostalgic song—that doesn’t drive the larger narrative of who we are, either as individuals or as a society. Wallace wrote powerfully about religious belief in the present, but the scene lasts for only eight pages. Even that tells you something. And Wallace (does this need to be noted too?) was not even a professing believer.

The challenge is even more complex. I think the extension of Elie’s argument is that we need more than for religious belief to be captured and represented as it’s lived. What we need is for that representation of belief to say something about us and to us—not religious belief as subject matter but religious belief that actually matters. It’s not that we need religion represented in literature so that believers will feel validated and seen. We need belief explored in literature to help churn our collective predicament and to show us important things we might otherwise miss if this older dimension gets ignored. This is what it would mean to put it all together. And Elie’s right: it’s rare to see it done because it’s really hard to do.

Enter Jamie Quatro. Her first book, the short story collection I Want to Show You More (2013), must have been circulating in galley form right as Elie’s essay appeared. Those debut stories offered taut depictions of family and faith, children and illness, the legacies of the South around Lookout Mountain (along with bits of the American Southwest), and persistent, desperate longing. An elderly woman in one story offers a diagnosis of another character that could stand in for many others: “She been deprived of the real. She ain’t never had a touch of the real, all her life.” Quatro puts tremendous pressure on the characters in these stories, including on their faith, and she keeps applying that pressure right up to a two-page story at volume’s end, which includes a final affirmation so quiet and moving it’s as if we’re eavesdropping on an absolution extended (at last) to all the book’s characters.

Quatro’s second book, the novel Fire Sermon (2018), picked up these same themes with even more fervour. Where her short stories explored temptation, her novel succumbs to it, tracking an affair between two married writers. Stripped of its theology, Fire Sermon would be a common story of an affair and its ambivalent aftermath. But everything in this book is hot-wired with religious struggle. It is on fire with guilt and desire, soul-searching and hesitation, regret and defiance. The anarchy of appetite scorches the narrator’s perceptions, but her spiritual wrestling is earnest and learned. Early in the book, she wonders what exactly she would feel if she woke to find that Christ’s corpse had been discovered (and so not raised from the dead), or that airtight proof had been offered that God did not exist. Struggling to make sense of a relationship that feels both life-giving and impossible, her initial answer is “relief.” Later she decides her response instead is “despair.”

Fire Sermon ’s project is, at least in part, to reclaim or redescribe the relationship between eros and agape: eros becomes the condition for longing for God at all. In the process, the novel offers an unexpected interrogation of freedom itself. Filled with a longing that seems more powerful and primal than agency, we crave a freedom that would mean permission to indulge it. But what Fire Sermon decides is that without the limiting rails of law, we’re not free at all. Instead, “we are all addicts.” Does any member of our addled smartphone generation need convincing? Offered the utter freedom we think we want, Quatro writes, “we would sate and sate and sate again,” and “we would gratify our longings until we had nothing left to long for, and the ability to long itself died off.” Hermits have sought deserts and caves to avoid being consumed by these same dilemmas. But what if the solution, Quatro’s narrator wonders, is not denying our appetites or quenching every fire? What if, instead, our prayer might be, “ Let me burn, only walk beside me in the flames ”?

Up to this point in the book, I’m intrigued but I’m not yet moved, and I’m not sure I’m convinced that the stakes are high enough. And then Quatro does what she did in I Want to Show You More : she releases the building pressure in a conclusion devoid of sentiment but so full of feeling and grace it lands as a benediction. It’s the gentleness of this turn that raises the achievement of her work. A tough love story becomes a book about meaning. The arrival of grace for Quatro is not a rescue or a discovery of a new way of seeing. It is a choice. We don’t have a choice about whether we suffer, but we have a choice to make under the conditions of suffering. We can rail, we can submit, or, in Quatro’s world, if we hold on, we might find ourselves able to summon unexpected, hard-won generosity of insight and feeling. In Fire Sermon , the narrator’s affair has hurt her husband and imperiled her marriage, but they stay together. They hold on. And at the “end of all things,” Quatro writes, with biblical resonance, “when Love comes and asks me what I know, I will point to them, sitting there in the shade. I will say: This man. This woman.” That must be the narrator talking. It feels like the author.

Quatro’s first two books, then, explore in various ways the relationship between faith and desire, and there is nothing straightforward about her treatment of either. Her new novel, Two-Step Devil , stretches her canvas much wider. The themes of family and faith are very much present, and we grow even more familiar with the Lookout Mountain region that has become Quatro’s postage stamp. Her ambition is large, and religious belief still frames that ambition, as the section titles of the book make clear: Prophecy, Song of Songs, Gospel, and Revelation.

Two-Step Devil traces two converging storylines. One involves a man people call the Watchman and the narrator calls the Prophet. In the story’s present, he is old, estranged from his only son, and living alone in a cabin on the Alabama side of Lookout Mountain. People come to his front porch to buy fresh vegetables. Inside, his cabin is a homespun art gallery capturing his biblical visions, including an Ezekiel-inspired assemblage of saw blades forming interlocking wheels. One day, in quest of the final saw blade for his sculpture, in a junkyard beside an abandoned gas station, the Prophet spots an overdressed teenaged girl supervised by a suspicious couple. As their Mercedes pulls away, the girl lifts her arms in the backseat, showing zip-tied wrists. Deciding that he has been sent to rescue her, the Prophet manages to kidnap her away from what he assumes are her kidnappers. The young woman’s name is Michael, as in the archangel who wages war against the devil. Caring for her at his cabin, the Prophet quickly convinces himself that he had been sent to rescue her so that she could take his messages to the powers that be in Washington, DC, including to the president “with the face he trusted” (Obama).

In the long first section in which all this takes place, we get the Prophet’s full backstory: his dropping out of school at the age of nine, his alcoholic father’s early death, his job picking peaches, and an act of violence that sent him to Chattanooga, where he worked in a foundry, got married—and started having visions. His wife bore one son before succumbing to cancer. The son’s musical talent lets him escape his father’s claustrophobic isolation. They have a falling out when he does. Alone and mountain-bound, the Prophet sees visions on five-by-five sheets that drop like movie screens in front of him. There is an innocent comedy to what he reports seeing: floating fried eggs, power plants as beehives, donkeys representing the president. These visions feel delusional, not actually apocalyptic. He is more Don Quixote than he is Ezekiel or John Brown.

The other comic dimension of this prophet’s life is the apparition of the devil that keeps him company in his cabin. This devil is a wiry, cheeky, dancing cowboy, almost a marionette of a two-step devil, sent to taunt the Prophet. In the book’s third section, a one-act, seven-scene play, complete with stage directions, Quatro gives the devil his full due.

But before that theological disputation, the book turns to Michael’s story. Michael is a foster child who is by turns abused, betrayed, drugged, and trafficked. In her first two books, Quatro applied all the pressure she could muster to adults facing adult dilemmas. Here the pressures of a fallen world are piled onto a child. It’s hard to want to see a writer rise to Elie’s challenge when these are the stakes, but Quatro is fearless. The couple in the Mercedes that the Prophet saw that day pimp the young girl to rich customers aboard a derelict riverboat. The drugs are so she’ll float above her trauma; the zip ties are because she tried once to run away. One of her regular customers is a judge—a gatekeeper of justice. Another calls her Angel, darkly playing with her biblical name. Even the Prophet is using Michael. He sees her as his messenger. He gives this teenage girl instructions to travel alone on a bus on his behalf. But Michael is using him too, to get what she wants. Manipulated her whole life, she manipulates escape on her own terms, because she has a secret too.

Quatro is never sentimental. One of the achievements of Two-Step Devil is the way the encounter with the young girl leads the Prophet forward, not entirely out of his delusional visions but away from their dominance and toward a simpler sublime. At first the girl is his messenger, but by the time she leaves and he is confronting his own imminent death, it is Michael herself that matters to him. It’s not quite Don Quixote coming to his senses. But, softly and convincingly, the question that drives him shifts from, What cosmic conflict have I been sent to solve via visions? to, How can I help the one person who needs me? There is no grand speech or dramatic epiphany to mark this change. That’s not Quatro’s style. But the change nonetheless registers with power and beauty. Meanwhile, away from the Prophet, alone on the run, Michael is not out of the woods, not by a long shot.

Before we follow her to her fate, however, we have that strange dialogue between the Prophet and the Two-Step Devil. This stand-alone theological discourse adds ambition to the novel. The devil becomes here more than a figment of the Prophet’s imagination. In this brief play, he is a nimble historical figure, comically misunderstood and misused. “How maligned I have been,” he complains. “How deeply, irrevocably maligned.” In Two-Step’s telling, Jesus has also been misunderstood, and he offers a radically revised gospel to bring him down to size.

Quatro’s theological seriousness is convincing because she embeds it in so much lyricism—and because it is never cheap.

This brief section is important. The book is named for the cowboy devil, after all. Two-Step is not that interesting as a character, but his presence and his voice represent, I think, all the pressures that all the characters (in all of Quatro’s work) buckle beneath. I’m tempted to borrow Lorca’s term and call what he enacts Southern duende —a struggle with a force so real it seems embodied. This devil accuses the human race, mocking all of us for our faulty attempts to “curate the instincts,” to steer and control the things driving us inside, even as we pitifully long for immortality. We are “fleshsacks,” Two-Step says, and while Quatro registers the force of the taunt, she doesn’t deny it. We always will eat that forbidden fruit. We always will hurt even people we love. Look at us floundering around, Quatro’s three books agree. But to quote the poignant ending of I Want to Show You More , something worthy comes of all of this regardless: “I was thinking of Eve and her apple,” that story’s narrator says, “or whatever kind of fruit it was; how she was driven by delight to share the taste with the one she loved, and it ruined them both, but God, knowing this in advance, loved them anyhow.” How beautifully that line moves from the mature assessment of “ruin” to the innocent affirmation of the child’s “anyhow.” Quatro’s theological seriousness is convincing because she embeds it in so much lyricism—and because it is never cheap.

Another part of the ambition of Two-Step Devil involves politics. Here, this powerful book falters. The Prophet’s messages are intended for America (with an exclamation point added). The country, he declares, suffers from hubris, assuming that God blesses whatever it chooses to do because it is his chosen nation. It is arrogant and indulgent, and the Prophet has a warning of a massive heavenly army coming down to deal with all the evil on the planet. It’s not hard to agree that we could use some national humility, but his prophecies sound less like the messages of a third-grade-dropout, backwoods prophet and more like the speech-writing of a political pundit. Here is one example:

Doctors made a fortune to keep the human machine running. And here they were, at the U.S. Pipe and Wheland Foundry, keeping the machine called America running and making next to nothing doing it. Workers pouring the backbone and limbs, welders shaping the skeleton, sealing together the bones of a nation. And who were the doctors and lawyers, the politicians and bankers? The soft tissue sitting overtop. Flesh thinking it was independent of the bones underneath, detaching itself and starting to dry up. And the rotting lips kept making speeches at airports. Madness. America was consuming itself. A snake with its tail in its mouth.

Maybe Flannery O’Connor has infected me to think Southern prophets should be a little more bizarre. It’s hard not to think of The Violent Bear It Away (1960), which also features an older Southerner who considers himself a prophet and who kidnaps a young person in the name of rescue, yet who does not take it upon himself to diagnose, say, the Cold War. In these political stretches, Quatro’s Prophet, to me, speaks with a borrowed voice. In extending the book’s range to address the country at large and not just private life, to tackle, in Elie’s language, something of our collective predicament, Quatro loses the particularity that makes her story compelling. What happens to Michael is as big a canvas as this novel needs. Her plight suggests more about the country than any prophet’s pronouncements could.

And so to a remarkable, uncertain, heartbreaking ending, which enacts and asserts a hard-won grace. Quatro gives us multiple versions of what might happen to Michael, and she summons Two-Step to take us (and maybe the author too) where we might hesitate to go: “Now the difficult part,” this devil begins. “The girl at the bus station. The old man in the woods. You fleshsacks will want to look away. You must bear witness.” In all the accounts of what happens to Michael, it’s Two-Step’s reaction we receive. In one complicated scenario, he scolds the human race for its inability to deal with the most obvious fact about the world, that it is marked wherever we turn by paradox. “And this is the complication for you fleshsacks, isn’t it?” he says. “You cannot stand for the horrific and the beautiful to touch, cannot fathom a system in which one person benefits from the suffering of another. But so it is. So Creator has ordained. What a pathetic state he’s left you in.” Then, in another scenario, closing the arc of the novel with absolution in a way that has become Quatro’s signature, it’s Two-Step who offers tough, tendentious words of grace:

So much kindness among you fleshsacks, is what I’m saying. You forget this. You polarize, call something evil and forget the goodness the evil engenders. You call something good and forget the evil the good depends on. But the kindness! If you counterbalanced all the kindness with the evils you keep putting before your eyes—your newspapers and TVs, apps and websites—you would not recognize your own planet.

But Quatro isn’t done. She will not let us have the happy ending we might prefer. The words that end this morally difficult, emotionally devastating account of a young foster child sound like an accusation but feel like a plea. “This is a story we all know,” Quatro writes, as we tumble where we hoped the story wouldn’t go. “Don’t you dare call it a crime.” There is something startling in that direct address, something moving in the assertion of collective ownership, collective responsibility. It left me thinking anyway, What are we going to do with ourselves, in the world as Two-Step has described it? How are we going to frame our ongoing story? Or will we care that it continues as ours , as a story we all know ? Will we rashly scuttle the resources of centuries of religious stories and religious belief? Will they become bizarre cabin visions? Will they really not help us at all? Or can we pull those resources forward even if our relationship to them is ambivalent and haunted by two-stepping doubt?

Jamie Quatro has made religious belief live because she let religious belief struggle.

The passage through so much irresolvable tension gives Quatro’s final redemptive moves something akin to grace, or forgiveness, or maybe love. It takes courage to risk those final notes of generosity and skill to do so while avoiding sentimentality. Who can continue to be so hard on characters who deserve so much compassion? The religious novelist is tempted to rush to the rescue. The unbelieving novelist has to raise the stakes of tragedy in a universe cool with indifference. Quatro plays both sides, but not to draw a balance or make a compromise. The struggles in which her characters are suspended breed tremendous perception. Grace and generosity emerge like storms or fevers breaking. The characters are almost too beaten to receive them. The reader receives them on their behalf.

This is Quatro’s solution to the problem of portraying faith in literary fiction: relentless pressure shapes a final, but never triumphant, redemptive release. But the pressures must be particular pressures, and the releases particular releases. This is the key, the only key, to writing that assesses us and takes our measure through the lens of religious belief. The fiction writer gives us particularity: God loved this couple anyhow. This man and this woman is her answer to a massive theological conundrum about how our small struggles square with our cosmic understanding. In Two-Step Devil , it’s the devotion of an old man who thinks power plants are beehives to a young woman rushing headlong toward a future we can’t bear to imagine. Against oceanic feelings and collective creeds, literary fiction pitches specific encounter, particular hope, embodied grace. In three books that feel both fearless and forgiving, Jamie Quatro has made religious belief live because she let religious belief struggle. In doing so, she put it all together.

Two-Step Devil. Grove Press, 2024. 215 pp.

• August 29, 2024

Todd Shy is head of school at Avenues The World School in New York City and the author of Teaching Life: Life Lessons for Aspiring (and Inspiring) Teachers. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Commonweal, Christian Century, and other publications.

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