Saboteur Awards 2019 Category Spotlight: Best Magazine

Throughout the year there are magazines working hard to showcase, publish and generally support the literary talent the UK and the world over has to offer. The public vote put forward four magazines who are contributing to the literary world at large, and you can vote for your favourite by heading over to the voting form here.

Strix

Strix is a magazine of short fiction and poetry. Now two years old, its six issues have featured writers seeing their work in print for the first time alongside (sometimes literally next to) well-known, established writers. Poems from Strix have featured twice in Carol Rumens’ Poem of the Week blog. She described Strix as “handsome, streamlined and sharp-eyed…”. It’s designed and hand made by Andrew Lambeth, who’s a typographer as well as a poet; Ian Harker is co-poetry editor, and SJ Bradley edits the fiction.
To check out the website, and find out more about the Strix magazine, you can click just here.

Mslexia

Mslexia, the trailblazing magazine set up two decades ago to provide a platform for women who write, believes that despite enormous advances, women still face three serious challenges that prevent them progressing in the literary world. Those challenges are lack of time, lack of respect on the part of literary gatekeepers, and lack of confidence.

Mslexia was founded in 1999 by novelist and journalist Debbie Taylor, at a time when many believed the feminist publishing battles had been won. As a new mother she experienced first-hand the difficulties of raising a family, carrying on with her day job – and finding time for the ‘third shift’ of creative writing.

She realised that lack of time dovetailed with a range of other factors to cause ‘mslexia’, which she defined as the difference between women’s potential as writers and their actual achievements. The magazine Mslexia aims to investigate and ‘cure’ mslexia by showcasing writing by women and alongside information about publishing and creativity.

As well as igniting debate on gender and literature, the not-for-profit title has attracted over 22,000 subscribers (2,000 of whom have been with them from the start) and submissions from 100,000 women, aged from 18 to 88. Its many supporters include Hilary Mantel, Carol Ann Duffy, Sarah Waters, Wendy Cope and Val McDermid.

To find out more about Mslexia and their writing/publishing ethos, you can visit their website by clicking here.

Here Comes Everyone

Here Comes Everyone (HCE) is a lit mag based in Coventry, run by a team of volunteer writers, artists and other creative minds. It was founded in 2012 and handed over to the current editors in 2016. We publish poetry, short stories, non-fiction and artwork, working around a different topical theme for each issue (NHS, East&West, Brutality etc.). Our goal is always to offer up an entertaining publication packed with high-quality content, accessible for readers and contributors alike. Basically, the type of magazine the team themselves would want to read. We’re pretty philanthropic: those ants you see in our logo (pushing a cog) represent members of the arts community working co-operatively to achieve great things. Any writer or artist from anywhere in the world is welcome to submit work to us for consideration, and they can find more details for submissions on our website.

Riggwelter Press

Riggwelter Press is a monthly online journal of poetry, prose, visual art and experimental media, founded in 2016 and edited by Amy Kinsman. What we aim to publish is very simple: high quality work that our editor likes – those are the only two criteria. Turning our 35 collected pieces of work into a coherent, flowing issue is the editor’s job, not the contributors. We aim to keep our turnaround times at two weeks or under (you can usually expect a reply within a couple of days) and you will receive a response from us as soon as a decision has been made. We also publish reviews and essays on the website on an as and when basis and nominate our contributors for various awards, including the Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. We are very fortunate to have built a wonderful community of contributors, submitters, readers and supporters, and our inclusion on the shortlist for the second year running is a testament to their hard work and generosity.