Australian Literary Journals
Australian Book Review is one of Australia’s leading cultural magazines. Created in 1961, it publishes reviews, essays, commentaries and new creative writing. The magazine is national in readership, authorship, distribution, and partners.
Overland has been showcasing brilliant and progressive fiction, poetry, nonfiction and art since 1954. The magazine has published some of Australia’s most iconic voices, and continues to give space to underrepresented voices and brand-new literary talent every single day.
Australian Literary Studies Journal publishes literary studies scholarship that is rigorous, clear, and has a strong sense of its intervention in the field. It is interested in scholarship which speaks to Australian literary criticism, as well as that which expands the scope of literary studies internationally.
Meanjin was founded in Brisbane by Clem Christesen in 1940 to reflect the breadth of contemporary thinking, be it on literature, other art forms, or the broader issues of the times. Meanjin moved to Melbourne in 1945 at the invitation of the University of Melbourne.
Quadrant has maintained a tradition of publishing original writing on every aspect of society, as well as some of Australia’s best fiction and poetry. Although it retains its founding bias towards cultural freedom, anti-totalitarianism and classical liberalism, its pages are open to any well-written and thoughtful contribution.
Island is a quarterly literary publication produced in Hobart, Tasmania. Started in 1979 it provides a forum for Tasmanian writers and writers from around Australia and elsewhere to publish new work.
Griffith Review features a mix of essays, memoir, reportage, short fiction, poetry and visual essays by emerging and established authors who tease out the complexity of current events.
Kill Your Darlings embraces both high- and low-brow culture, and publishes commentary, essays, fiction, interviews and reviews online and in a quarterly paperback edition.
Southerly is one of Australia’s oldest continuous literary journals. The journal of the English Association, Sydney, it was launched in 1939 with works by authors such as AD Hope and Kylie Tennant. It was, from the outset, dedicated to publishing new Australian literature of the highest standard, and of providing a link between the academy and the garret.
Westerly has always sought to provide a Western Australian-based voice, although its contributors and subject matter have never been geographically exclusive. It covers literature and culture throughout the world, but maintains a special emphasis on Australia, particularly Western Australia, and the Asian region.
The Lifted Brow is a not-for-profit literary publishing organisation based in Melbourne, producing a quarterly print literary magazine of the same name. Their focus is on finding, publishing and championing work from the artistic and demographic margins, from Australia as well as the rest of the world.
Australian Poetry Journal is the only print-form literary journal dedicated to the publishing of Australian poetry, without set theme and across forms. Interviews, reviews, profiles, essays and features, about the poetics and experience of Australian poets, and related participants, such as publishers, accompany the poems.
Heat has a national and international reputation as a showcase for contemporary writing from Australia, and from overseas, often in translation. Since March 2005, it and the Giramondo imprint have been published from the Writing & Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University, which brings together writers, publishers, scholars and students.
Mascara Literary Review is particularly interested in the work of contemporary migrant, Asian Australian and Aboriginal writers. It specialises in publishing platforms for subaltern writing and human rights, focussing on cultural cohesion and participation. It fosters a space for critical research and avant garde writing that is both progressive and vibrant.
Brain drip pitches itself as a writing forum that is accessible and open for everyone, looking at writing on its merits alone. They do not charge authors to submit their work, do not have any memberships, and blind read all submissions.