Literary Journal

Menagerie Magazine

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About the magazine

Menagerie Magazine is an online literary and arts journal founded in 2014 with the conviction that the best work often emerges from the margins of genre and form. Its name signals a deliberate embrace of the eclectic—not as a gimmick, but as a curatorial principle. The magazine publishes poetry, short fiction, essays, and visual art that resist easy categorization, favoring writing that is formally restless and emotionally precise. Over the past decade, Menagerie has built a reputation for pairing emerging voices with established ones, creating a conversation across generations and aesthetics rather than a single house style.

Editorial focus

Each issue of Menagerie Magazine is a curated exhibit of poems, fictions, and hybrid works that deserve the close attention of a small stage. Like a Joseph Cornell shadow box, the editors bring together a mixture of things found and made, memories and discoveries, outcast and beloved. Hybrid and uncategorizable pieces are of interest, as are the unwieldy, the absurd, the grotesque. In short: if you’ve written something and don't know what to call it, they want to see it. Their menagerie is unending and contains all kinds of curios.

PoetryFictionCreative Nonfiction

Submitting your work

Reading periodFeb 1 to May 31

Reading feeNo

PaymentCash

Response time3 to 6 months

Simultaneous submissionsYes

Unsolicited submissionsYes

Before submitting, read at least two recent issues to understand the magazine's range—Menagerie values surprise and precision over polish for its own sake. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but notify promptly if your work is placed elsewhere. Include a brief cover letter that situates your work without over-explaining it; the editors respond well to confidence and concision. Expect response times of two to four months, and avoid querying before that window closes. Most importantly, trust the magazine's stated openness to hybrid and cross-genre work: if your piece defies easy labeling, it may be exactly what they are looking for.

We’re not interested in conventional work, but in work that actively defies convention. Sample some of our past issues to get a sense of the magazine.

Read official guidelines

Submission calls

1 listed

OpenDeadline · 2027-02-01