LitMag #5 is in production, and it marks five years of publishing a journal that has done most of what we hoped back when we conceived it. It’s actually six years, or close to seven. But does one count the gestation period when computing the birthday of an elephant? So it’s five years, and we’re excited about publishing issue #5. It should be at your Barnes & Noble in a few weeks.
During those five years, we lost Tin House, and other literary notable magazines have also closed. Many of the big ones that remain have narrowed their submission windows, to three months a year, or two months, or even only one month. We can understand why they do that, but we remain open about eight months a year. And there have been consequences: we used to take two months to reply with a decision; now we generally need six months.
We remain dedicated to giving unpublished and emerging writers a good look and a rare opportunity, publishing exciting debuts next to award-winning writers.
LitMag is all about print—the long painstaking labor of luscious print. We try to make every issue the kind of object that book lovers will love, a beautiful journal that feels good to hold and ogle.
We hope you will all keep spreading the words we publish. You can celebrate LitMag by buying five copies of issue #5 for five friends. And you can celebrate LitMag by continuing to send us your gems.
We thank all of you who take time to send us your good wishes. We thank all of you who read, subscribe, and submit. We are nothing without all of you. And now we are five. Cheers!