We’ve all had those moments when we got all too excited and shared a new poem, story, or art we created on our socials or blogs. If you plan to submit them for publication elsewhere, there’s one caveat, though most journals and mags only accept work that has NEVER been published anywhere.

Often, the only option is to wait for them to publish your work before republishing it on your own socials or website. In most, if not all, cases, the rights revert to you immediately after a mag or journal has published your work, and you’re free to do whatever you wish with your piece. This could take months on end, from review to publishing.

It’s a tricky situation, especially for newbies who are trying to get build their byline from established publications but also need a steady stream of content (i.e. their own art) to grow their audience or build a community.

Luckily, a number of respected foreign publications accept previously published works – and many even offer payment for your work upon acceptance! Below are nine of them.

(If you happen to know a publication that’s not included below, let me know in the comments , or send me an email via this contact form. I’ll happily add it to the list.)


Taco Bell Quarterly

Taco Bell Quarterly is the literary magazine for the Taco Bell Arts and Letters. We’re a reaction against everything. The gatekeepers. The taste-makers. The hipsters. Health food. Artists Who Wear Cute Scarves. Bitch-ass Wendy’s. We seek to demystify what it means to be literary, artistic, important, and elite. We welcome writers and artists of all merit, whether you’re published in The Paris Review, rejected from The Paris Review, or DGAF what The Paris Review is. 

First and foremost, TBQ is about great writing. It’s about provoking and existing among the white noise of capitalism. We embrace the spectrum of trash to brilliance. 

– Taco Bell Quarterly website

Smokelong Quarterly

We are dedicated to bringing the best flash narratives to the web quarterly, whether written by widely published authors or those new to the craft.

The SLQ aesthetic remains an ever-changing, ever-elusive set of principles, but it most likely has to do with these kinds of things:

  • language that surprises and excites
  • narratives that strive toward something other than a final punch line or twist
  • pieces that add up to something, often (but not necessarily always) something profound or emotionally resonant
  • honest work that feels as if it has far more purpose than a writer wanting to write a story

– Smokelong Quarterly Website


Scrawl Place

Scrawl Place is part visitor’s guide, part travelogue, part literary journal. It’s meant for readers who prefer Bashō to Lonely Planet.

The audience for this online publication is the guest, the visitor, the traveler, the day-tripper, the out-of-towner, and the in-towners eager to wander. I’m looking for submissions about “places in the places” where you live or where you’ve visited.

My only fixed criteria is that your submission be about or connected to or associated with a specific, physical place that someone could visit. The more specific the place, the better. How that manifests in terms of content, style and form is up to you.

The place you write about could be a Wonder of the World, a random street corner that means something to you, or anything in between.

My aspirational hope is that readers will think of you and your words if they ever happen to visit the places you write about, then maybe write some words of their own and start a dialogue across time and space.

– Scrawl Place website


Stanchion

Launched amid the tumultuous summer of ’20, Stanchion is a quarterly zine, printed on thick, elegant uncoated A5 paper and featuring short stories, flash fiction, poetry, one-act plays, evocative thoughts, drawings, and black & white photography from some of the most talented artists working today.

Stanchion issues have no themes. This means that happy, sad, tender, ferocious, melancholic, murderous, reflective, speculative, horrific, joyful, artful, goofy, oddball, sentimental (without being sappy) — anything and everything else — is on the table*. I love powerful, beautiful, energetic, unusual work, work that takes chances, writing that has something to say without beating the reader over the head with a message, work that has a soul and a beating heart, is vulnerable, and most importantly of all, is honest and 100% original. I want to feel something, to care about the action, characters, etc inside the worlds you create.

Stanchion is an inclusive space, a paying publication, and a safe home for diverse voices from across the globe.

– The Stanchion website

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/StanchionZine
  • Submission guidelines: https://www.stanchionzine.com/submissions
  • Based in: US
  • Accepts: Art, prose, and poems previously workshop and/or published in social media and the artist’s personal blog
  • Payment: 15USD + complimentary copy of the print issue
  • Note: Since Stanchion exists in print, it requests that writers do not repost the entire piece online after publication in the zine.


The Lumiere Review

At The Lumiere Review, a nonprofit literary magazine, we strongly believe that all creative voices should be heard through a platform to shine light on every story, idea, and experience. We are intrigued by the inextinguishable sparks of truth and connection, the effervescent meddling of narrative, and the luminous creations that expand on perceptions of genre, language, and form. After all, we aspire to be the brightest magazine around.

– The Lumiere Review website

Delicate Friend

Delicate Friend is an adult (18+) quarterly arts and literary magazine centering romance, yearning, eroticism, and other forms of desire and intimacy. We were inspired to create this platform after someone tweeted, “all of the poetry that needed to be written already was […] you don’t need to fuck up this grand tradition talking about having sex with people you met on your iphone [sic].” We thought this sounded like a great idea for a magazine.

Delicate Friend is a place to enjoy the softer side. We want the unruly things you type at 1 A.M. The quiet daydreams you’ve scrawled down about your crush. Breathless reflections on your favorite fanfiction or how your body comes alive in nature. In short, we want your art and writing about things that are… delicate.

We theme and un-theme issues on a rotating basis. We aim to publish marginalized and otherwise unheard creators, including sex workers, people of color, disabled people, trans and queer poets and non-poets, new authors striving for their first publication, and those who occupy the many spaces between. 

– Delicate Friend website

Barely South Review

Barely South Review is the literary journal of the Creative Writing program at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. We are dedicated to publishing prose, poetry, and art from both emerging and established writers and artists. Our name refers to our home – the coastal Tidewater region of southeastern Virginia and its unique blend of diverse cultures and histories. We feel there is great complexity in any creative assertion of “here,” and it is in this spirit that Barely South Review features voices that defy easy regional, thematic, and stylistic categorizations. We seek great writing in its myriad forms.

– Barely South website


Bulb Culture Collective

We are a new literary journal with a focus on previously published works that have lost their original home with journals that have gone dark.

– Bulb Culture Collective website

Indigo Literary Journal

Indigo, to us, means softness – despite everything. It’s coming home after a long day to a cup of tea that is warm as touch; reading a poem on the train as the rain grieves against the glass, a distant sadness that doesn’t have to be yours; or an evening spent with loved ones, their hands falling against your shoulders like cardigans, guarding against tomorrow. It’s a promise that this tenderness is not a moment but a place we return to.

We believe in the power of the written word, that it has multiple forms which can channel comfort to anyone needing it. We trust in the sharing and promotion of literature, and that any ordinary pen can be truly musical. Show us your hauntings, your joys.

– Indigo Literary Journal website

In Personal journal, Writing life

Gretchen is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist from the Philippines, where she embraces life while managing bipolar disorder and ADHD. Her confessional pieces unpack the complexities of grief, healing, motherhood, love, and intersections, garnering recognition from the Greg Grummer Poetry Contest and Navigator's Travel Writing Competition.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *