Where Emerging Writers Should Submit: Three Literary Magazines Compared

If you're a new writer wondering where your work actually has a chance, the answer is rarely "everywhere at once." It's a handful of magazines whose editorial personalities match your manuscript. Three independent outlets—Emerge Literary Journal, Another Chicago Magazine, and The Kenyon Review—have each made discovering new talent part of their stated mission, but they champion very different kinds of writing. Here's how they compare, and how to tell which one deserves your submission.

Introduction: Navigating the Literary Landscape for Emerging Writers

The hardest part of submitting isn't writing the piece—it's choosing the door to knock on. Large databases list hundreds of magazines and let you filter by genre and reading period, but they can't tell you whether a journal wants your restrained lyric poem or your politically charged braided essay. The difference matters. A submission that fits a magazine's editorial focus has a fundamentally different fate than one that doesn't, no matter its quality.

So rather than casting a wide net, I'd suggest reading each magazine's own language about who it serves. That's what the three journals below reveal: not just what they publish, but what they say they're looking for when they describe emerging writers. What emerges are three distinct "flavors" of support—an explicitly emerging-writer journal, an independent magazine with a political and small-press sensibility, and a prestigious institution with a long history of launching younger writers.

Emerge Literary Journal: A Platform for Fresh Voices

Emerge Literary Journal is the most direct match for the brief. Now in its thirteenth year of publication, it is a quarterly online journal of poetry and prose that describes itself as "dedicated to emerging writers and their words." Its welcome is unusually generous about who counts as emerging: "Whether you're a new writer, a writer new to publishing, or a writer with experience experimenting with their style of work, we dedicate ourselves to you. Where do you and your work fall? You decide."

That breadth matters if you've published before but are still building an audience—the journal doesn't gate "emerging" behind a publication count or an age. Stylistically, its preferences are specific: it loves and prefers free verse, flash, and creative non-fiction, looking for "succinct images and dialogue that linger" and "ideas used in magnificent ways." Two practical constraints shape your approach: it reads only during specified reading windows, and it charges a $3 submission fee. If your flash piece or compressed free verse carries voice, place, and passion, this is your most targeted option.

Another Chicago Magazine: Independent, Diverse, and Politically Engaged

Another Chicago Magazine offers a different kind of welcome—one rooted in its history and its politics. It began in 1977 as a publication showcasing work by graduate creative writing students at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and after a final print edition in 2017 it shifted to continuous online publication, featuring new work two to three times per week. Its origins as a student showcase still signal its orientation toward writers finding their footing.

The magazine's submission categories are broad: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, translations, interviews, reviews, and art. Its nonfiction tastes run toward formally adventurous work—memoir, reported essays, braided essays, collages, vignettes, literary journalism, oral history, and meditations—described by the magazine as "political in the largest sense." For poetry, it asks for 3–5 poems, no more than 7 pages total, and notes that while it reads all styles, it tends to publish work that is "more experimental and/or sonically driven."

Two policies distinguish ACM for new writers. It explicitly champions independent presses—those Raymond Carver called "the backbone of the national literature"—publishing interviews with small-press authors and reviews from independent publishers, and it says it is drawn to political subject matter. And while it charges a small fee for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to cover Submittable costs, it waives the fee for BIPOC writers, which it describes as "a small form of literary reparations." Its reading period rotates, so check its current status before submitting.

The Kenyon Review: Prestigious Support for Diverse Emerging Talent

The Kenyon Review represents the institutional end of the spectrum. Its stated editorial focus is to identify exceptionally talented emerging writers, especially from diverse communities, and to publish their work—fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, and reviews—alongside the distinguished established writers in its pages. That structure is the appeal: an emerging writer placed in the review appears in the company of writers at the top of the field.

The magazine's history shows this isn't a recent branding exercise. Founded in 1939 by the poet-critic John Crowe Ransom, it published internationally known figures like Robert Penn Warren and Delmore Schwartz during his twenty-one-year tenure, alongside younger writers—Flannery O'Connor, Robert Lowell, and Peter Taylor among them. Publishing there is a higher bar than at the other two magazines, and the evidence here doesn't include specific recent examples of debut writers it has launched or how those placements affected their careers. But the mission, as stated, is explicitly to find new talent and put it in that company.

Literary Magazine Comparison for Emerging Writers

The table below puts the three magazines side by side, drawing on their own statements about mission, genre, and support for new writers. Read the final column as the question you're really answering: which magazine's definition of "emerging" and editorial appetite matches your manuscript?

The comparison reveals the strategic choice. If you want a journal whose entire reason for existing is writers like you, Emerge is the clearest fit, especially for flash, free verse, and creative non-fiction. If your work is formally experimental, politically engaged, or sits in the flexible territory between genres—collages, braided essays, oral history—ACM's stated tastes point directly at you, and its fee waiver may apply. If you're willing to compete at the highest institutional level for the sake of that company, The Kenyon Review's mission is explicitly to find you.

Making Your Submission Decision

To maximize your chances, align the work with the magazine's specific editorial focus and genre preferences, and be honest about which context it fits: the broad emerging-writer platform, the experimental and politically engaged independent magazine, or the prestigious institutional journal. A flash piece with lingering images doesn't need The Kenyon Review's reach to find its home; a formally ambitious essay may bore one editor and electrify another.

Before you submit, verify current reading windows on each magazine's own site—this guide is not a real-time tracker, ACM's reading period rotates, and Emerge reads only during specified windows. It's also a curated selection, not an exhaustive directory, and no submission guarantees publication.

The measurable next step is concrete: a writer identifies literary magazines whose editorial focus and genre preferences align with their manuscript. Read each magazine's published work, match your strongest piece to one of these three editorial personalities, and confirm the reading window before sending it. That single act of alignment—manuscript to mission—is what separates a targeted submission strategy from a scattergun one.

Sources

• Emerge Literary Journal
• About — Another Chicago Magazine
• LibGuides: Creative Writing: Literary Magazines
• Submissions — Another Chicago Magazine
• Another Chicago Magazine Submission Manager — Anotherchicagomagazine
• Another Chicago Magazine — Poets & Writers