Test Driving Literary Journals
This year I began with gusto reading literary journals. I paid for subscriptions to a couple, including Glimmertrain and McSweeney’s, to get a feel for what they had to offer. And then I sent a short story in to a contest at Redivider — the $15 fee giving me a subscription. But I also purchased a subscription through Journal of the Month, which sends you, based on the amount you pay, anywhere between 6 and 24 random journals a year. By joining, I’ve been able to sample literary mags that I might not otherwise have known about.
The first journal to arrive was Middlebury New England Review and most recently, the Raleigh Review. Both are very different from one other. NER is thick with smallish print and offers content that includes fiction, poetry, reflections, cultural history, translations, literary lives and more. Raleigh Review on the other hand is compact, thin and sleek. It has art, fiction, poetry and reviews. The fiction is flash, nothing more than 2 1/2 pages.
This post is by no means a review of these journals. I’m merely suggesting that if you’re on the fence about which literary journals to subscribe to, consider going with Journal of the Month and test driving a few.
What journals do you read?
Tracy Staedter 
None. But maybe I should. I’ve always wondered who reads them, to tell the truth. But then, we all want to be read but not to read.