Guest Post by Hunter Choate

The buzz surrounding online literary journals is growing, with discussions and articles appearing in places like HTMLGIANT, Flavorwire, and even The Huffington Post. Both as a reader and a contributor, there’s a lot to appreciate about online literature. There is quality and aesthetic variety. It’s free and available to anyone with a Web connection, giving online journals a vast potential audience. The medium also frequently allows for commentary and dialogue in response to published works. This provides a sense of community and immediacy that transcends location. For a writer, it can be a way to help build an audience and a platform for launching future projects.

I’ve compiled a list of 25 journals that are getting positive word-of-mouth. The list includes the following:

Flavorwire’s Ten Online Lit Mags You Should Be Reading

Responses to Blake Butler’s question posted at HTMLGIANT – “What do you think are the top 5 online magazines, based on content, prestige, and design?”

I tallied the answers and included those magazines mentioned four or more times. That’s an arbitrary number on my part, but it helped to keep the list manageable.

To make the list an even 25, I also included 4 wildcards. These are journals I see frequently mentioned as publishing some great stuff. (Full disclosure, I’ve had work appear in one of them – Emprise Review.)

The List (In Alphabetical Order):

1.    Abjective (Via HTMLGIANT)

2.    Action, Yes (Via HTMLGIANT)

3.    Anderbo (Via Flavorwire)

4.    Annalemma (Via HTMLGIANT)

5.    Bartleby Snopes (Via Flavorwire)

6.    BLIP (Via Flavorwire)

7.    decomP (Via Flavorwire)

8.    Diagram (Via HTMLGIANT)

9.    elimae (Via HTMLGIANT)

10. Emprise Review (Via Wildcard)

11. Everyday Genius (Via HTMLGIANT)

12. Fifty-two Stories (Via HTMLGIANT)

13. Guernica (Via HTMLGIANT)

14. Kill Author (Via Flavorwire)

15. Lamination Colony (Via HTMLGIANT)

16. McSweeney’s Interenet Tendency (Via Flavorwire)

17. Metazen (Via Wildcard)

18. Moon Milk Review (Via Flavorwire)

19. Mud Luscious (Via Wildcard)

20. Necessary Fiction (Via Wildcard)

21. Octopus (Via HTMLGIANT)

22. PANK (Via Flavorwire and HTMLGIANT)

23. The Collagist (Via HTMLGIANT)

24. The Exquisite Corpse (Via Flavorwire)

25. Twelve Stories (Via Flavorwire)

To be sure, there are other great online journals that could easily make a list like this. What are some of your favorites? Any underappreciated gems you’d like to add?