How I Got an Acceptance From My “Dream Journal”...and You Can Too

"At the start of 2024, I wrote down my goals for the coming year..."

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

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At the start of 2024, I wrote down my goals for the coming year, including listing my top two “dream” literary magazines—Brevity for nonfiction and Rattle for poetry. Eleven months later, that dream has become a reality. Of course, the journey of how I got here doesn’t start at the beginning of 2024 but many years before that. My strategies to get into these two literary magazines were similar in some ways, but different in others. I hope that my story and my strategies will help you get your “dream” acceptances too.