Paying Fee-Free Literary Essays

The Adroit Journal is a registered literary and arts nonprofit organization that was founded in 2010 by poet Peter LaBerge. At its foundation, the journal has its eyes focused ahead, seeking to showcase what its global staff of emerging writers sees as the future of poetry, prose, and art…
Topics: Open to all/most topics.
Lengths:     Interview, Review, Essay, Narrative Nonfiction.
Payment: to Token to Professional. Details: USD $100.
Avg. Response: Faster than average responder. 30.4 days.
Acceptances: Challenging. 4.2% of nonfiction submissions accepted.

The American Scholar is the venerable but lively magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932. In recent years the magazine has won four National Magazine Awards, the industry’s highest honor, and many of its essays and articles have been selected for the yearly Best American anthologies…
Topics:      Open to all/most topics, including: History, Literature/Books, Science, Society/Culture.
Lengths:   Article, Essay.
Payment: to Semi-pro to Professional. Details: Up to USD $500.
Avg. Response: Average responder. 60.9 days.
Acceptances: Unknown. None reported yet in nonfiction.

The Baltimore Review was founded by Barbara Westwood Diehl in 1996 as a literary journal publishing short stories and poems, with a mission to showcase the best writing from the Baltimore area and beyond. Our mission remains just that. However, in our online format, we can now bring that fine writing to the world's attention, more frequently, and at less cost. We can also explore new ways to bring the world of writers and writing to the reader's attention.
Topics: Open to all/most topics.
Lengths:   Essay, Narrative Nonfiction.
Payment: to Semi-pro to Professional. Free copy(ies). Details: USD $50.
Avg. Response: Average responder. 80.7 days.
Acceptances: Challenging. 1.5% of nonfiction submissions accepted.

Electric Literature is a nonprofit digital publisher with the mission to make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. We are committed to publishing work that is intelligent and unpretentious, elevating new voices, and examining how literature and storytelling can help illuminate social justice issues and current events. We are particularly interested in writing that operates at the intersection of different cultures, genres, and media.
Topics:    Open to all/most topics, including: Literature/Books, Memoir.
Lengths: Essay.
Payment: to Token to Semi-pro. Details: USD $100.
Avg. Response: Slower than average responder. 87.8 days.
Acceptances: Challenging. 2.0% of nonfiction submissions accepted.

The Ex-Puritan began in 2007 as The Puritan Literary Magazine, an independently funded print journal dedicated to publishing fiction, essays, and interviews in Ottawa, Ontario, and was sold in bookstores across the city. In its early years, The Puritan was Ottawa’s only quarterly prose journal. After a brief hiatus, the magazine returned to publishing, now in the form of an online magazine run from Toronto…
Topics: Open to all/most topics.
Lengths: Essay.
Payment: to Semi-pro to Professional. Details: CAD $100 per interview; $200 per essay; $100 per review.
Avg. Response: Slower than average responder. 124.6 days.
Acceptances: Challenging. 5.3% of nonfiction submissions accepted.

Glossy Planet is a fast-moving, challenge-style lit mag for writers who have something to say—right now. Each call responds to the world in real time, inviting short, sharp, or strange work that meets the moment. We’re interested in impact over polish, urgency over perfection. Think: the literary version of a group chat, if your group chat included a bunch of excellent writers trying to make sense of it all…
Topics: Other.
Lengths:   Essay, Narrative Nonfiction.
Winner's Prize: Professional. Details: USD $1,000 for first prize.
Avg. Response: Faster than average responder. 19.8 days.
Acceptances: Challenging. 0.3% of nonfiction submissions accepted.

The Markaz Review (TMR) is an online and print review of art, music, film, literature, ideas, cities and culture writ large, with an emphasis on freedom of expression and a focus on the writers and artists from the center of the world. Organized as a nonprofit in France and the United States, TMR supports creative people of the greater Middle East, generally thought to include the Arab world, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Africa…
Topics:          Open to all/most topics, including: Film/Television, Literature/Books, Music, Performing Arts, Place/Regions, Society/Culture, Visual Arts, Other.
Lengths:    Review, Article, Essay.
Payment: Unknown. Details: An honorarium.
Avg. Response: Faster than average responder. 33.1 days.
Acceptances: Challenging. 2.8% of nonfiction submissions accepted.

MudRoom is a journal of poetry and prose. Our mission is to provide every writer, emerging and established, the opportunity to both see their work published and engage with a larger literary community. We are committed to publishing underrepresented voices, especially BIPOC, Queer, Trans, women, and disabled writers. In other words, we ourselves are queer and see queerness as expansive, compelling, and experimental…
Topics:   Open to all/most topics, including: Literature/Books.
Lengths:   Essay, Narrative Nonfiction.
Payment: to Token to Professional. Details: USD $15.
Avg. Response: Faster than average responder. 44.7 days.
Acceptances: Unknown. None reported yet in nonfiction.

West Branch is a magazine of poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews. Founded in 1977 and housed at the Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts at Bucknell University, West Branch publishes a fall, winter, and spring/summer issue each year.
Topics: Open to all/most topics.
Lengths: Essay.
Payment: Professional. Details: USD $0.10/word, max. $200.
Avg. Response: Faster than average responder. 32.3 days.
Acceptances: Challenging. 2.9% of nonfiction submissions accepted.