Who Reads Lit Mags? We Do! Spotlight on The Offing, Honey Literary, The Threepenny Review, n+1, and Fourth Genre
"do I read lit mags for pleasure, because I want to be stunned by our world...?"
Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.
Hi, all. Jessica here. It’s the first Thursday of the month, which means we all get to share what we’ve been reading in lit mags!
As always, I’ve been keeping a list of all works mentioned in this series, including works shared in the comments section, which you can find right here.
So, not too long ago, I started doing The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. This is a twelve-week self-guided program that helps people focus on creativity by doing various activities, including writing assignments, journaling longhand every morning, and going on solo adventures meant to spark inspiration and playfulness. It’s a surprising amount of work, enough that when people ask me what I’ve been up to, it’s the first thing that springs to mind.
I admit I was a little embarrassed to talk about it at first, especially because some of what Cameron says is very woo- woo, but then I discovered that most people I talk to about it either know of someone who did “the program” or have tried it themselves. I found out from The Internet People’s podcast that even Doechii has done it. Considering that Julia Cameron’s book first came out in the 90s, it makes sense, and I’m actually really curious to hear if any of you folks have tried it as well.
During week 4 of The Artist’s Way, one of the assignments was a “reading deprivation,” a challenge to refrain from reading entirely in order to quiet external influences. I found this fascinating, especially from an almost archaeological perspective, because Julia Cameron was writing in a pre-internet age. Her intended audience wasn’t constantly bombarded by emails, texts, social media sirens, or the endless digital blah blah blahs. When she talks about cutting out the noise, it strikes me as both prescient and paradoxical, because by today’s standards, the noise she was asking people to eliminate was a whisper compared to the roar we live in now.
Well, that week, I did not deprive myself of reading. I considered it, and I did hold back from using my phone quite a bit, but I did not cut out reading books and lit mags. In fact, I read more lit mags that week than I did any other week in May. I even woke up at 2 in the morning one night because I wanted to read “shame/she/sea” by Ariana Matondo one more time. Yes, I know that sounds crazy but this poem really is delicious and I wanted to experience these lines one more time:
i beg her to spare my kind; to remove all our abyssal and abysmal. to take the a’s out of shame. the m’s too.
Which made me think about why I read lit mags in the first place.
Do I read lit mags because I’m supposed to? Out of a sense of obligation? Because I want to be published and feel the need to keep tabs on what is being published these days? Or do I read lit mags for pleasure, because I want to be stunned by our world, and savor what today’s writers (and lit mag editors!) have cooked up?
In 2016, Elizabeth Gilbert had a short podcast series to expand on the ideas in her book Big Magic. In one of her episodes, titled “Sexy Dirty Nasty Wicked,” Gilbert encourages an art teacher to have an affair with her art. The kind of affair where you sneak away in the middle of the day just to be with it. Where even the most mundane tasks become charged with excitement, like how even when you drink a glass of ice water and you think about how your secret lover could also be drinking a glass of ice water, it feels like an electrifying event.
And I’m sure this isn’t what Julia Cameron intended when she challenged people to abstain from reading for a few days, but it did really help me read for pleasure. To sink my teeth in and make what I was feasting my eyes on count. Even after the week was up, that shift stayed with me. I saw lit mags as a pleasure in the most romantic sense; it was a chance to discover what writers were obsessed with, what they were chasing, and how they were trying to seduce the reader.
Okay, so I may have lost a few of you by bringing up Julia Cameron and then immediately pivoting to Elizabeth Gilbert. Fair. As a palette cleanser, let’s talk about The Offing. I love the name of this lit mag. The definition of “offing” can be found right on the lit mag’s homepage (“the most distant part of the sea seen from the shore”), but I also love it as a double entendre. The promise of work that throws the reader off, because the works are surprising and untethered from what you thought you knew.
I first discovered Isaac Pickell’s poem, “Fuck my lecture on craft, your people are dying” when it appeared in The Offing on May 21st of this year, and the title alone stopped me cold. The poem was raw, urgent, and the last two lines really struck me:
When I die, I’ll keep writing about flowers. I don’t know what else to offer you.
Later, I realized it was written in response to Noor Hindi’s “Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying,” a poem I hadn’t heard of until encountering Pickell’s. I was remiss not to have known it. Hindi’s poem is a vital and necessary read, and has been widely shared. Discovering it second felt like arriving late to a conversation, thinking I knew what was being said, and then realizing the conversation was actually… (I almost turned this into a metaphor but stopped myself just in time). Hindi’s poem is fierce and unflinching. Pickell’s is vulnerable, overwhelmed by his own complicity. Read together, they form a call and response about power, witness, and the limitations of art.
There’s so much more to unpack (like in each poem the role of the moon!), but that’s probably a whole essay on its own, so I’ll leave it there for now.
The poem I mentioned earlier, “shame/she/sea” by Ariana Maton appears in issue 9 of Honey Literary. More than a lit mag, Honey Literary is a 501(c)(3) literary arts organization built by women of color. It describes itself as a space for BIPOC women, non-binary and trans people, disabled writers, and LGBTQIAP2+ creatives of color, and says they are looking to publish “agitators, righteous disruptors, weirdos, and wild ones.”
What I love about Honey Literary is that despite its rich offerings, the website is sleek and inviting, letting the reader focus on the work. Each issue has pieces from evocative categories: Ariana Maton’s poem, for instance is in the sex/kink/and the erotic category. There is also hybrid, animals, interviews, food and beverage, Valentines, and Sticky Fingers, where the “Hive” interviews authors about their latest and upcoming releases.
Another poem from Honey Literary that blew me away is “Abecedarian Mango” by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi, which is in the food and beverage category. I first encountered the word abecedarian through this poem, and there are also examples of other abecedarian poems thoughtfully included by the poet to offer an understanding of the form and it’s potential.
Now, I can’t stop saying it: a-b-c-darian. It’s usually a poem where each line or stanza begins with a successive letter of the alphabet. In Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi’s poem, she builds a layered, alphabetical exploration of mangos while guiding the reader through her memories and identities. I love every letter of this poem, but here is one that really stuck with me:
Q is for question who the fuck knows why some of us get mangoes in our lives and some of us don’t?
Maybe sometimes even God likes to be surprised
While I was on my cheater’s version of a reading deprivation, I kept my phone in my pocket as much as I could and imagined what an event would look like if Honey Literary hosted live events, especially in my current place of residence. I imagined they would offer tiny little honey pots with grooved wands so that we could all sample the bees’ bounty, our lips sticky and sweet, while listening to the contributors spout their liquid gold. (Maybe they could even have honey from around the world and offer miele!)
The next lit mag I want to gush about is The Threepenny Review. I have a soft spot for this one, especially because it’s printed like an old-fashioned newspaper. There’s something deeply nostalgic and grounding about the way it feels in my hands, how it sounds as I turn the pages, the way I fold it back like I’m settling in with the Sunday paper.
My favorite section is Table Talk, which reminds me of The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town. This section is made up of short literary musings that feel like the beginning of a good conversation with friends. In the Spring 20025 issue, Clifford Thompson wrote a piece about Facebook that struck such a chord with me I almost wrote him a letter in response. (I’ve been meaning to delete my Facebook account for years, but somehow… I just never get around to it.)
This issue of Threepenny also has a poem that I can’t stop thinking about called “Emotional Realism” by Maria Martin. I was struck by how clearly this poem felt tailored for this particular magazine, which has an affinity for realistic poems that offer readers a brief, intimate glimpse into another person’s life. Maria Martin’s poem, though brief, masterfully conveys a sweeping sense of time. It folds in on itself, with an ending that circles back to the beginning in a way that deepens as well as redefines the initial moment.
Next up: n+1, which I picked up at Broadway Books here in Portland. It’s been on my radar ever since The Cut wrote a piece about n+1’s Ultra gala to celebrate the lit mag’s 20th anniversary.
The name n+1 (you know you were wondering) comes from the algebraic expression to suggest that no matter what exists, there’s always something vital to be added. N+1’s issue 49 has a piece called “Planet Puppet” by Mina Tavakoli about a ventriloquist convention that completely stole the show for me. Tavakoli’s language was so precise, so atmospheric, that I genuinely felt like I was in the room, surrounded by puppets and the vaguely cult-like “vents.”
And finally, a piece published in Fourth Genre called “False Alarm” by Jennifer Murvin. I’d categorize it as a “graphic story,” although Fourth Genre calls it “multimedia.” The distinction only matters because I love encountering work like this, but they are surprisingly hard to find, due to the lack of a consistent search term. That’s probably just the librarian in me talking, always wanting to neatly catalog the uncategorizable.
Especially as a mother, this piece gripped me by the throat. It uses a refrain that begins with when, and the panels forgo traditional sentence structure, letting the rhythm build in a way that mimics the pulse of anxiety. You can feel the spiraling, the racing thoughts, the mental clutter of panic. It captures the emotional whiplash of caregiving, the suppressed rage aimed sideways at a partner, and the overwhelming helplessness that a parent has to claw their way out of so that both you and your child don’t drown. It’s a reminder of how form can mirror feeling, how the artwork, though masterful in its technique, is simple and raw, perfectly capturing the stark, black-and-white intensity of anxiety in the face of uncertainty. The structure itself becomes the story’s heartbeat, echoing the emotional rhythm of the experience it conveys.
So, those are my picks. I can’t wait to hear what you all have been reading too.
As I’ve said in previous posts, please note that while I look forward to our Lit Mag Brags each month and seeing what and where everyone has been published, this is a resource for what we’re reading, not what we’ve written.
Feel free to share any and all works from lit mags, and I’ll add them to the list!
What have you read lately?
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so . . reading THIS was a stunning away to start a day . . . and juxtaposing the F-your-lecture poems, wow . . . will be passing that exercise along with credit . . . this whole comment thread is a gift . . . thank you
Power-packed. https://www.havehashad.com/hadposts/visitation