At least two print-based literary magazines have opened up their recent issues for online reading during the pandemic:
- Ecotone issues 25, 26, 27, and 28 (their most recent issue) are free to read online “throughout the pandemic.” To start reading, go to: https://ecotonemagazine.org/magazine/
- The Missouri Review’s content is available online through the Project Muse database until the end of March. (See the tech note below, to help you navigate Project Muse.)
Print-based literary magazines don’t seem to share much of their content online, so these opportunities are worth checking out.
Magazines offering full-text content through Project Muse
Here are seven lit-mags, including The Missouri Review for now, that continue to offer full-text content from their recent issues through Project Muse:
Publication | Available content | Most recent issue |
| The Missouri Review (University of Missouri) | 1978 to present | Winter 2020 (Vol. 21, No. 4) |
| Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction (Michigan State University) | 1999 to present | Fall 2020 (Vol. 22, No. 2) |
| Prairie Schooner (University of Nebraska Press) | 2003 to present | Summer 2020 (Vol. 94, No. 2) |
| Minnesota Review (Duke University Press) | 2010 to present (plus many older issues) | 2020 (Issue 95) |
| River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative (Ball State University) | 2003 to present | Fall 2020 (Vol. 22, No. 1) |
| Sewanee Review (Johns Hopkins University Press) | 2007 to present | Winter 2021 (Vol. 129, No. 1) |
| Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing (University of Hawai’i Press) | 1999 to present | 2020 (Vol. 32, No. 2) |
Note that database content can change quickly. In other words, due to budgets, contract negotiations, and legal and financial wrangling, publications can pop into and out of Project Muse and other databases. What you were looking at yesterday, might not be there today.
For my students, I recommend they download any database document (including bibliographic information) if they even think it might be useful in their work. Note that these downloads are for personal use only.
About Project Muse
Project Muse is an online database available through many college and university libraries. The database offers access to articles, poems, fiction, nonfiction, and other content published by a variety of journals, including select literary magazines.
In terms of market research, database access to full-text content is valuable because once you’ve read what a magazine is publishing, you can sense whether your writing might find a home there. Also, it never hurts to mention a memorable piece you read from the editor’s magazine when writing a cover letter.
TECH NOTE: How to search the Project Muse database
Databases offer multiple points of access, but the following is the quickest way I’ve found to search for and read content from the magazines listed above using Project Muse.
1.
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NOTE: Skip the “Content Type” filter, which starts a much broader search related to journals.
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To narrow your results, click on the name of the publication (the link) within your Results list.
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Scroll down on the “About this Journal” page and you’ll see a list of the available volumes and issues of the magazine. If you’re doing market research, you’ll want to look at the most recent issue, which is currently “Volume 43, Number 4, Winter 2020.” Click on the link to the issue you would like to search.
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From this Table of Contents screen, you can click on View (to read content online), Download, (to get the pdf file), or Save.
NOTE: Content isn’t often labeled as fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, but the page numbers offer useful clues. A one- or two-page article is more likely to be poetry, and a 10- or 20-page article is likely to be fiction or nonfiction.
Melissa Olson-Petrie 