The 48 Best American Fiction Lit Mags
All of the lit mags who have appeared in Best American Short Stories in the past decade.
I love this anthology series. But I hate the impact it has had on the world of writing. By being one of the most prestigious and well known anthologies, it has fed the outsized role America plays in the indie lit world. This is not a mark against them or the stories in them. I just hate when there are lists like these that ignore the reality of what is being shared.
Yes, I want to share these brilliant magazines that have been included in this well-curated, highly-respected anthology series. No, I don’t want to pretend that makes them the best in the world.
So, grains of salt…it is raining grains of salt.
With that out of the way, yes, we went and pulled every mag that has appeared in Best American Short Stories for the past ten-or-so years. Not just that, we counted each time one of them appeared. So you can see not only if, but how many times, they’ve been included. Pretty neat.
There are some that have gone defunct like Tin House and Glimmer Train. And others that we don’t have in our database yet like McSweeney's Quarterly, e-flux journal, Esquire, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Freeman's. And some that require caveats. Hobart has undergone a load of editorial changes in recent years so I don’t know if I’d classify it the same way. And Narrative Magazine takes submission fees in the form of vital organs.
For each listing, I have included all the goodies:
how many times they’ve appeared in B.A.S.S.
location (obv), founding date, genre, description
fee, pay, response times, acceptance rates, noteworthy tags, and more!
Hope you enjoy and good luck.
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