Va Va Va Voom! Lit Mags That Publish Erotica

By Lauren Rheaume

Our culture gets more sexually explicit every day, yet it seems that many people still don’t openly talk about sex, never mind write about it. Still, there are sex writers out there, and more markets opening up for them. In the words of George Michael: “Sex is natural, sex is good. Not everybody does it, but everybody should.”

So, on that note, here is a list of journals that publish erotica. If we’ve excluded any, please feel free to add them to this list! 

BUST. Think you can inspire a little self-directed friction with your erotic fiction? Then send your smutty stories to the attention of "One-Handed Read", where hotness rules and cliche drools. Submissions should be approximately 1500 words long.

Cleansheets.  Founded in 1998, Clean Sheets is a premier venue for literary erotica on the Web, with over 3,000 readers a day, viewing millions of pages every month. An impressive percentage of what we publish is picked up by major print anthologies each year, including Susie Bright's Best American Erotica series, the Best Women's Erotica series, and Mammoth Books' Best Erotica series. Clean Sheets welcomes tales of all sexual persuasions, and we are open to both established and new writers.

Cliterature. Cliterature is an online literary journal dedicated to women's sexuality. Since 2006, Cliterature has published poetry, short stories, excerpts from novels, and artwork on quarterly basis. Every new issue is assigned a theme, but women's sexuality has always been a primary focus.

Erotica Quarterly is published on a quarterly basis (4 times per year) and features a variety of erotic content, including short stories and poetry. We are interested in mainstream erotica - sexy, steamy and sensual. Nothing overtly offensive, please. Any setting/time period is accepted. Most genres of speculative fiction are welcome, as long as the story has a strong erotic overtone.

Libido is “one of the most original and influential literary magazines in the United States.” –Susie Bright

Headmaster, the biannual art magazine for man-lovers, is published twice a year in an edition of 1,000.  All work in Headmaster is assigned by the editors.  Writers and artists interested in receiving homework assignment from the editors should submit a bio and writing samples via email. Headmaster publishes roughly five text-based pieces per year.  Work published in the first two issues of Headmaster include erotica, film criticism, travel writing and memoir.  The editors of Headmaster are interested in other forms of writing as well.

Nefarious Ballerina is a theme-based publication, centered around, for lack of a better word, erotica. This sounds easy enough, but to do it well is the hard part. We are interested in the intelligently erotic. What does that mean? Well, it's what you say and how you say it that's important, it's about sex but it's also about feelings and morality. It's the fire that burns in our heads and hearts as well as our loins. It's more about what goes on above the waist than below it. It's about the animal in us that makes us human and how much we've evolved as a species -- and how much we've stayed the same.

Milk Sugar is a literary journal that was formed with the creative writer in mind. We want to provide a forum where writers feel free to express their creative side in an environment that actually promotes creativity and not the status quo. Milk Sugar is not meant to be your typical literary journal, hence the name. We want the erotic, the fantastical, the existential, the dirt, the grime and most of all the ultimate beauty that is a well-written piece. Allow us the privilege of finding out who you are through your work. Represent yourself well.

Omnia Vanitas Review is a delicate mixture of Féminine Écriture, New Narrative, and Clit Lit. We enjoy explicit descriptions of sex written in white ink. Deflowering language. Multiple orgasms with multiple climaxes. The playful touching of intertextuality. Deliberately elusive linguistic weavings. Words who slow dance with Aphasia and flirt with Amnesia. Words wet with formlessness. Words pregnant with child. With twins, with quintuplets. Though we consider ourselves an erotica magazine, we also interpret “erotica” rather loosely. We think of the act of writing—words penetrating the void, pen piercing paper—as an erotic endeavor, and though some of our submissions are transparently risqué, we can’t think of anything more racy than the pure desire to write.

Sexology. Sexology wants your personal essays, fiction, and poetry that examines sex as a cultural phenomenon and encourages potential discussion with our readers. Submissions should be no more than 2000 words for prose, no more than 1000 words for poetry. Writing can be raunchy, arousing, and nasty as hell, but please, no straight porn, no straight erotica, and no romance. Also, no journalistic articles.

Scarlet Letters. Since February of 1998, Scarlet Letters has been one of the web's premier publishers of sex-positive, original, visionary creative and artistic work of all kinds. Unifying our erotic and sexuality content for women as well as men with an array of other types of work, we break boundaries and bridge gaps, crashing the genre and gender barricades in favor of a collection of constantly updated work from some of the most inventive authors and artists online. Our goal: to give our readers an intimate perspective on artistic expression without pretension or arbitrary limits. Get ready to look at sexuality, erotica, creativity and online media in a whole new way.

Sliptongue. Literary fiction, with both humorous and dark erotic content.
Emotion-saturated tales that bring about a surge in the bloodstream, shivers in the spine, swells of laughter, or any combination thereof. Epigrams, narrative poetry, and laugh inducing ditties.

Lauren Rheaume is the Director of Marketing and Outreach for The Review Review.

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