Literary Journals

Last week I went to Borders where I inspected literary journals. I need to scope some out because I'm finishing up a graduate course on creative nonfiction (as my legion of regular readers are well aware), so now I want to try to publish some and literary journals publish that sort of thing. It's important to study the markets. A journal devoted to, say, the fiction of Afghanistan is not going to be interested in my essay on the joys of studying Taekwondo so I should save everyone a lot of time (and, on my part, embarrassment) and not submit it there.

I found maybe six to eight different publications, which was way too many for me. I was overwhelmed. What to buy, what to buy? I finally gave up and purchased Riverbank Review , which really won't help me much as far as my essays are concerned because it's a review of books for young readers. But, read what you know, right?

I wish I could report on what I've read in Riverbank Review . But, of course, I've only read part of the first article. However, it's about nature writing, and, interestingly enough, I've just read two books of nature writing in my class. Well, actually, I read only one of them because I'm a really lousy student. Still, isn't it strange that nature writing keeps turning up in my life?

Perhaps someone is trying to tell me something.