Literary Journals
Australia is home to a wide variety of both new and long-established high-quality literary journals that demonstrate the breadth of Australian creative talent and you’ll struggle to find a genre, style or form of writing that isn’t represented. A selection of Australian literary journals can be found below:
- Archer – an award-winning print publication about sexuality, gender and identity, Archer Magazine is published twice-yearly in Melbourne, Australia, with a focus on lesser-heard voices and the uniqueness of our experiences.
- Australian Book Review – an independent, not-for-profit monthly magazine, Australian Book Review (ABR) is one of Australia’s major cultural magazines. ABR presents high-quality journalism and new writing for the widest possible audience. It engages with all the arts, not just literature. It is diverse in terms of content, writers, and partners.
- Griffith Review – Since 2003, Griffith Review has been the leading literary magazine in Australia with an uncanny ability to anticipate emerging trends. Each themed collection presents fresh insights and analysis of the big issues from emerging and established Australian and international writers, featuring a mix of essays, memoir, reportage, short fiction, poetry and visual essays. Griffith Review is a high quality, agenda-setting, quarterly publication, delivering insight into the issues that matter most in a timely, authoritative and engaging fashion.
- Island – a not-for-profit organisation that produces a high-quality print magazine of non-fiction, fiction, poetry, art criticism and visual art. Since 1979, Island have been celebrating ideas, writing and culture, and while the magazine’s format and editors have changed over time, their mission remains the same: to produce a magazine with a national vision and audience that supports new, emerging and established writers and artists, and to bring works of excellence and variety to the reading public throughout Australia and overseas.
- Kill Your Darlings – Founded by Rebecca Starford and Hannah Kent, Kill Your Darlings (KYD) is one of Australia’s leading arts and culture magazines. Beginning life as a print quarterly in 2010, KYD is today a vibrant and eclectic online magazine of commentary, essays, interviews, fiction and reviews.
- The Lifted Brow – featuring essays, commentary, fiction, poetry, comics, art, and mixed media from established and emerging writers and artists, The Lifted Brow is a not-for-profit literary publishing organisation based in Melbourne, Australia. Their focus is on finding, publishing and championing works from the artistic and/or demographic margins from Australia as well as the rest of the world.
- Meanjin – Known primarily as a literary magazine, Meanjin reflects the breadth of contemporary thinking, be it on literature, other art forms, or the broader issues of the times. Meanjin was founded in Brisbane by Clem Christesen (the name, pronounced Mee-an-jin, is the word in the Turrbal language for the finger of land on which central Brisbane sits) in 1940. Meanjin moved to Melbourne in 1945 at the invitation of the University of Melbourne and at the beginning of 2008 Meanjin became an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing.
- Overland – Australia’s only radical literary magazine – Overland has been showcasing brilliant and progressive fiction, poetry, nonfiction and art since 1954. The magazine has published some of Australia’s most iconic writers, and continues to give space to underrepresented voices and brand-new literary talent every single day.
- Seizure – beginning in 2010 as a magazine collaboration between Alice Grundy and David Henley, Seizure has grown into a flourishing website and community for writers, editors, publishers and readers. Seizure is currently made up of a around a dozen volunteers who work to improve literary and publishing culture in Australia.
- Tincture – a quarterly e-book literary journal, Tincture Journal features fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction from Australia and the world.
- Voiceworks – a national literary journal that features exciting new writing and art by young Australians. Our purpose is to create a space for people under twenty-five to develop their creative and editorial skills and to publish, and be paid for, their fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art and comics. Voiceworks is published by Express Media, a not-for-profit organisation that provides support and development opportunities for young people in the literary arts.
- Westerly – since 1956, Westerly has been publishing lively fiction and poetry as well as intelligent articles. The magazine 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.