5 Personal Essay Prompts and 6 Lit Mags to Submit Your Finished Essays
Sub Club Specials (5.22.25) | It's navel-gaze o'clock somewhere!
Stuck in the memoir mud? Want to get back in the personal essay submitting game? I've got ya!
This month, I've got five fresh personal essay prompts and six magazines to send your personal essays to. These magazines are mostly on the newer side, and they all have really gorgeous websites, because I am weak in the face of good web design.
With these prompts, I'm giving you some new angles to help you find your way into an essay from a perspective you might not otherwise consider. All of these prompts are inspired, distantly or closely, by techniques or ideas that came up while I was vetting magazines for this list. If you need additional inspiration, look at the catch feels section under each magazine—I chose those just for you!
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1. Object Study
Choose an object that holds significance to you. Maybe it's a gift from someone important to you. Maybe it's something you had to convince yourself you deserved. Maybe it's something you lost a long time ago, but still think about.
Now follow that object through time and tell its story as if it were the protagonist. Where did it come from? How did it end up with you? If you no longer have the object, where is it now, and how did it get there?
Whatever stories this object holds for you, tell them through the eyes of the object as witness or participant. If you want to get more experimental, write the perspective of the object from a first-person point of view.
2. Focal Length
Choose an event or period from your life where you behaved in a way that now feels unrecognizable to you. Write a first-person present-tense account of that time or experience, trying to recreate your internal machinations as you remember them, unfiltered by hindsight.
Then, respond to what you've written with the context of a broader timescale. Add annotations or footnotes to the narrative, or use the future tense to show how your perspective has changed.
3. The Big Bang
Think back to the early years of your life, a time before you understood your life in the context of a broader world. What events, forces, or ideas that you grew up with can you now identify as evidence of larger goings-on in the world? What is the history behind the particular environment in which you were formed? You can look to this piece from Alexander Chee, where he talks about researching his hometown, for inspiration.
Then, try to identify the first moment you felt acutely aware of yourself as part of the larger forces of the world. Use these reflections as the jumping off point for an essay.
This prompt was inspired by the piece "McGovern Junior High" by Gregg Triggs.
4. I See It Everywhere
Think of a neutral and common sensory experience: strong winds, the color yellow, the texture of flannel. Write a list of moments when you can remember that particular experience. See if a theme arises between the moments that share that sense memory, but don't push it.
Through association, see if you can find other sensory experiences that connect—for example, from the color yellow, you may think of the flame of a candle, wax, or warmth. Write these moments with as much sensory detail as possible, focusing on the experience and allowing the theme to remain subtle or unstated.
This prompt was inspired by "Color Days" by Dian Parker.
5. Voices
Think about the voices that exist in your head. That one thing someone said to you that you'll never forget. The phrases or mantras or mottoes that you repeat. The attitudes and messages that live inside you, regardless of whether you would choose them.
What is your relationship with these voices? Which are comforting? Which would you rather shut up? See if you can compose an essay primarily from the dialogue between these denizens of your mind.
Amsterdam Review → Open for submissions | Fee: No | Pay: No | Open for Poetry, Multimedia, Nonfiction, Fiction | ☑︎ Sim Subs | ✖️ Reprints | R: 90 days | A: 10.53% | 400+ followers | 2021 — "Amsterdam Review is an online literary magazine of poetry (including translations), flash fiction, interviews, review, essays, and visual arts which publishes works by international contributors twice a year, and is always open for submissions."
Reasoning: Amsterdam Review is an independent, relatively new journal, but you might not guess that just by looking at it. The magazine exudes a prestige vibe, presenting fantastic writing in a clean, professional manner. From what I've read, they seem to like work that situates the personal in broader contexts. Send them nonfiction up to 3,000 words.
Catch Feels: Color Days by Dian Parker leans more personal and experimental; Five Weeks by Alex Poppe, more narrative and political.
Grand Journal → Open for submissions | Fee: No | Pay: No | Open for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry | ☑︎ Sim Subs | ✖️ Reprints | R: 90 days | Under 100 followers | United States | 2020 — "The journal is predicated on giving space to a diverse and inclusive community of writers and artists across multiple genres including fiction, poetry, reportage, criticism, essays, memoir, and art and photography."
Reasoning: Grand Journal is a magazine based out of the bookstore One Grand Books in Narrowsburg, NY. They have a beautiful, clean aesthetic and have published some pretty major writers, including Ilya Kaminsky, and many other cool people. Send them essays between 2,500 and 4,000 words.
Catch Feels: McGovern Junior High by Gregg Triggs; The Huma Bird Never Lands by Navid Sinaki.
Nulla → Open for submissions | Fee: No | Pay: No | Open for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry | ☑︎ Sim Subs | ✖️ Reprints | R: 30 days | A: 0.1% | 100+ followers | United States | 2025 — "An independent journal run by writers, artists, and--most importantly--readers. Looking for everything from the contemplative to the experimental to the traditional. "
Reasoning: Nulla is a relatively new journal with only two issues out so far, but I really like their visual style and the prose they publish. We don't have tracker data for them yet, but you can help with that! Send them prose up to 7,000 words.
Catch Feels: Both of these have unmarked genres, but start with Habit by Cameron Dezen Hammon and My First and Last Date with Mara by Ari Moskowitz.
Tiny Molecules → Open for submissions | Fee: No | Pay: No | Open for Nonfiction, Fiction | ☑︎ Sim Subs | ✖️ Reprints | R: 90 days | A: 7.17% | 4K+ followers | France | 2019 — "A quarterly online literary journal of fiction and essays. We love flash, we love experimental, we love saying something big in a small space. We are every part of you written down. Tell us how to be human."
Reasoning: Tiny Molecules is a magazine of flash fiction and nonfiction. They are open for essays under 1,000 words for their Observations section. Many of the essays they publish use image to access larger human themes.
Catch Feels: Leaf Games by Kevin Grauke; How to Eat Pitanga by Kristi Ferguson.
Exist Otherwise | Theme : Personal Essay → Deadline: May 31 | Fee: No | Pay: Yes (varies) | Open for Nonfiction, Fiction, Hybrid, Multimedia, Poetry | ☑︎ Sim Subs | ☑︎ Some Reprints | R: 60 days | A: 5% | Under 100 followers | United States | 2021 — "Free quarterly online journal of creative writing and photography. Our muse and inspiration is the gender-non-conforming writer, photographer, actor, and activist, Claude Cahun. We seek work that is personal and willing to challenge."
Reasoning: Exist Otherwise is a magazine publishing all kinds of writing (under 1,000 words), with a tendency toward experimental and political work. They specifically encourage writing engaged with themes of identity/self, gender, trauma/recovery, and intuition/dreams.
Catch Feels: Consecrated by Use by Adrienne Pine; Zoom by Roz Leiser.
Talk Vomit | Theme: The Uncanny → Deadline: June 7 | Fee: No | Pay: $5–$35 | Publishes Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry | ☑︎ Sim Subs | ✖️ Reprints | R: 90 days | A: 11.11% | 600+ followers | United States | 2019 — "Talk Vomit is a literary magazine based out of Massachusetts that harbors a willful longing for when the internet was still fun. We publish essays, short stories, reviews, experimental prose, and limited poetry."
Reasoning: Talk Vomit checks a lot of my boxes: a single editor magazine, fee-free and pays, with a local focus (Massachusetts-based) but open to all. They have a fun, playful vibe, and publish beautiful issues online and in print. Send them essays up to 4,000 words for their next issue with a theme of the uncanny.
Catch Feels: Fabric of Reality by Kristina Kucinas; Freshman Year Portrait in Bruises and Reblogs by E.F. Flynn.
