1. Most publishers and literary journals are based in the United States.
2. These presses and journals are also more likely to be open to direct submissions from writers regardless of their geographic location. Presses and journals from other countries, in particular Canada and the Australia, are more likely to get funding from the government, which can lead to limits on how many (if any) international writers they can publish.

Some of the journals on this list are not open to international submissions or are only open to international submissions during certain periods of the year. If that is the case, we try to make it clear in this article.

If we missed any of your favourite Canadian journals, please send me an email at support@authorspublish.com. I do really like The Walrus, but they are not on this list because I know some authors struggle to receive payment from them.

The Fiddlehead
Published by the University of New Brunswick, The Fiddlehead is the oldest literary journal in Canada that is still in circulation. It is a print journal with issues published four times a year. Contributors are paid, get a free subscription and two contributor copies. They have two online submission periods per year, one is open to international submissions, the other is not. They’re open to mailed submissions year-round.

The Ex-Puritan
This established paying market is open to a wide range of submissions. They have submission caps on fee free submissions.

ARC Poetry Magazine
This established paying market produces a beautiful print journal and is only open to poetry submissions. They are only sometimes open to international submissions, and sometimes charge for international submissions. Check their guidelines for details.

The Malahat Review
This established and respected journal publishes poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction, as well as translated work in any of these three genres, by new and established writers from Canada and abroad. They are always open to submissions from Canadians, and have limited windows for international writers.

Prairie Fire
This print journal only allows postal submissions from most authors. They have additional details with exceptions to this on their website. They are a paying market, but generally only respond to submissions if they are interested in publishing the work.

The Literary Review of Canada
An established and respected publication, they are open to pitches of reviews, essays, and during certain periods, poetry. They rarely accept already completed work.

Broken Pencil
They publish short fiction, articles, and reviews around Zine culture and the independent arts. They are a print and digital magazine and they offer free digital samples. 

Room
Canada’s oldest feminist print literary journal is a paying market that features fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and art by emerging and established women and genderqueer writers and artists. Submissions are restricted to “folks of marginalized genders, including but not limited to women (cisgender and transgender), transgender men, Two-Spirit and nonbinary people.”

Augur Magazine
This is a wonderful speculative fiction magazine. They primarily publish Canadian authors and Indigenous creators, and have demographic restrictions sometimes.

Toronto Journal
They publish short stories from around the world, and nonfiction that is set in Toronto or the region or explores local history. They are a paying market. The journal has a print and audio version.

Launched in 2020, The Imagist is published twice a year online. Each issue contains writing from around five to seven contributors. Some past issues have been themed, but most issues are not themed. All writing published in The Imagist is archived and available online.

Now through November 11^th, The Imagist is accepting submissions for their next issue. Poets may submit one poem, up to 40 lines. Authors of prose—fiction and creative nonfiction—may submit one piece, up to 1,000 words. Authors submitting early in the submission period will receive a faster response.

Authors should send only one submission in each category per submission period. That means authors can submit up to one poem and one piece of prose.

The Imagists accepts submissions via email, not online or by post. They accept simultaneous submissions but ask that authors withdraw writing published elsewhere. They do not accept previously published work.

The Imagist only accepts submissions that follow the guidelines they’ve posted online. Please read these guidelines in full before submitting.

If you would like to learn more or submit to The Imagist, please visit their website here. 

I previously wrote here about the benefits of maintaining a writing log and setting concrete goals, such as finishing first drafts or writing 500 words every day. Word counts have always been an integral part of my writing process; reaching the daily goal gave me something to work towards. However, for the past year—the most prolific period of my life–I have not been keeping track of my writing output.

Back when I wrote every day without fail for years, it was numbers that brought me to my desk to write. I got excited about entering my daily word count and watching my streak grow. After I broke that streak, I made several attempts to start another one.

For someone who loves working with words, I thought too much in numbers.

Last year, I found myself very overwhelmed; I was making myself do a lot of things that I didn’t really need, such as trying to have hobbies in various domains, saving articles I’d never have the time to read, and carefully tracking my word count. One day I decided to stop—and found it liberating.

I’d recognized that at this stage—as of September 2024, I’ve been writing regularly for over eight years—simply writing more words would not make me a better writer.

Out of the 1.5 million+ words I’d written—the number I’d reached when I stopped keeping track—I’ve published less than 5%. (A much larger share was published on my blog, which I’m not counting here.) This huge output helped me establish my basics—grammar, vocabulary, voice, rhythm—but despite writing and having folders upon folders filled with drafts of essays and short stories, I had very little that was worth publishing. This was based not just on my own judgment of my writing but also on the rejections I received from publications.

As Brian K Vaughan, a comic book and television writer, once said:

“Every writer has 10,000 pages of shit in them, and the only way your writing is going to be any good at all is to work hard and hit 10,001.”

My focus all these years had simply been on getting the words down no matter what. And so even on days when I could have spent more time on planning, plotting, thinking, I didn’t. Instead, I just started typing whatever came into my head until I hit my daily goal. It felt more like a chore I had to continue doing to call myself a(n aspiring) writer. My writing was often—though not always—all over the place; I didn’t produce drafts that could be transformed into something submittable.

Now, I’m focusing on learning how to write with style, form, and substance. I’ve been experimenting with different ways of writing essays and even playing with the possibilities of blogging. I’ve written some of my best pieces during this new period.

Another benefit of not tracking my writing numbers is that I can take breaks without guilt. It took me a long time to understand that I wasn’t less of a writer if I didn’t write every day. And since I didn’t force myself to do that, I ended up writing fewer drafts. But they were also good, useful drafts, because when I did sit down to write, it was because I had something to say—a tutorial, an interview, a personal essay about a book that deeply impacted me, and so on.

In the beginning, numbers and stats make one feel like one’s actually doing something, making progress. But equally important is to recognize that not everything can be quantified, including writing quality. That comes with thinking deeply about one’s writing goals, the story one wants to tell, the form in which the story will be told, and so on. These things won’t happen automatically; one needs to slow down. And I was able to do that when I stopped tracking my daily word count and instead focused on writing less but better.

Bio: Ratika Deshpande (she/her), writes, rambles, and rants on her blog at chavanniclass.wordpress.com