Most literary journals are interested in literary work, by which they mean, not genre work. The dictionary definition of genre is “a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter”.
However, in the context of writing, genre can refer to poetry, prose or nonfiction in terms of form. Or it can be a subject matter classification referring to science fiction, romance, mystery, or various other established types of stories.
Most literary journals assume that you will not submit genre work to them, because many don’t consider it to be literary. This leaves many genre writers with fewer options in terms of short story and poetry publication. However, there are journals that just publish genre work.
The majority of these focus on science fiction and mystery. But there are also horror, western, romance, fantasy, thriller, and other genre publishers on this list. We tried to focus on literary journals that specialized, not ones that were open to every genre in the book.
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