The Journal, an award-winning literary journal published semiannually by Ohio State University, features innovative and challenging poetry, short fiction, and novel excerpts. Work by The Journal has recently appeared in the Best American Poetry anthology. Founded in 1972, it has a circulation of about 1,500.
Why Read -- and Submit to -- The Journal?
Over the years, I have subscribed to many literary magazines and journals, and The Journal is one of the few that I will read cover to cover. The work is challenging and adventurous without being opaque -- it's the kind of rare writing that I find myself thinking about months after putting it away.From the standpoint of submissions, it's worth knowing that The Journal receives some 100 unsolicited submissions each month, and they publish about two of them per issue. So though getting published there is definitely a feather in your cap, they continue to consider the work of new and unpublished authors.
Writing Sample from The Journal
"The Moving Finger," a Borgesian story by Richard Powers from the autumn/winter 2007 issue, was one of those stories that stayed with me:
When I was a child, I built the world out of childish ideas. I truly thought that literature and the Starship Enterprise were on the same mission. Every book I came across was like a fresh planet, with altered gravity, an exotic atmosphere, strange kinds of chemistry unlike anything else in the known quadrant. The point wasn't to decide whether you liked the place; reading wasn't an exercise in real estate. The point was to beam down to the surface, prowl around the glistening crystal formations, mix it up with the unfathomable native life forms, then try to get back to the ship alive . . .
