On Reading for Lit Mags: Why Behind the Scenes Matters Now More Than Ever by Ashley Anderson

I’ve been thinking about behind the scenes lately.

I’ve also been reading a lot this year, consuming books and the written word in a way I haven’t done in years. In all honesty, I’m not sure what I’ve done more of in 2025: reading or writing. This has been a year in which the world has been upside down, turned sideways, and is spinning off its axis. Everything is constantly public and in our faces; headlines are relentlessly blaring, opinions framed as facts intrude on our spaces. Disengaging comes with a variety of risks we constantly have to weigh.

Even though there’s been so much emphasis on what is going on publicly—who has done what, who is speaking up for what cause, who is in the streets protesting, who is pushing for transparency—I’ve been thinking a lot about the kinds of work that go unseen even though the results are very visible. My thoughts on the topic are particularly focused on reading for literary magazines and how that act, done both alone and in community with other readers and editors, emphasizes process over product and seeks to emphasize the joy of discovery in a time when productivity rules supreme. Reading for literary magazines is another form of resistance in a world that wants everything right now, especially for those who are not always ready and willing to be at the front and center every day.

The aspect I find the most valuable about reading for literary magazines—as opposed to the reading of them—is being a part of and emphasizing the writing process. The age of generative artificial intelligence (AI) encourages us to skip the writing process. It puts heavy emphasis on the product, regardless of its quality, because the product is what is visible. But being a part of the writing process as a lit mag staff member provides us a unique place in the writing process, somewhere between revision and publication, where we get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a writer’s mind at work, a snapshot in time in which the writer has to make decisions. Is this piece finished? Should I test the waters with an audience of fellow writers and editors? Is this something I want to put in front of an audience? Answering those questions comes with a degree of necessary bravery, knowing that there probably isn’t nor will there ever be a concrete, correct answer. But as lit mag readers and editors, we can engage in that conversation with the writer through the submissions process. Is it an easy conversation to have? Not always. Is it a vital conversation to have away from prying eyes and public pressure? Absolutely. It reinforces the process, the try-again-ness, that is vital to writing and writing well—whatever that means for an individual writer. When a writer who has engaged with that try-again-ness repeatedly hits their stride, finds their groove, and lands in a queue with readers and editors who see how that process has come to fruition, it’s a special kind of magic that happens and only happens in an environment that values the journey over simply looking at the end result.

That magic comes from the joy of discovery, of finding the unexpected, the new, the exciting, the different among a virtual pile of digital pages sent from all around the world. Without reading for literary magazines, that joy of discovery dwindles and fades for so many of us who are engaged with literary communities. It’s not just the staff readers and editors who lose out on that joy, though. Our readers also lose that moment of discovery when they can no longer find something new, something different—some new world—at a time when the arts as a whole are being eroded and opportunities to seek out what makes us human are being pushed away. 

Speaking of worlds, this is where I find some of my joy in reading for lit mags. As writers of all genres, we build worlds all the time, whether they are fragments of this world or entire realms of worlds that have yet to or may never be the ones we live our lives in. As readers, we take those details and structures from the page and reassemble those worlds in our minds every time we engage with a piece of literature regardless of where it’s published. But as readers for literary magazines, we also take part in the process of world-building each time we think about a new issue. We lit mag readers seek out what sparks our interests, what captures our attention, what captivates us in terms of art. Editors curate their respective sections and think about the connections across the larger issue, while also engaging with pieces to help bring those worlds to their fullest potential. The world of each issue is built through the collaboration of many people at various stages of the publication process, but this is an important act of collaboration. With the current state of the world we physically live in, this act of building another world is important, not only in terms of supporting literary communities, but also in helping us to envision a space on our own terms, of our own priorities, of our own imagination and dreams.

At a time where the world around us is being continually dismantled and remade for the worse, building our own spheres of existence that emphasize process, slowness, and discovery is an act of resistance. In building slower, less product-oriented places that include everyone, reading for literary magazines shows that another realm is possible, one that reflects communities of practice instead of pushing for more and more product that disregards labor, disregards safety, disregards the variety of ways in which people exist. This act of reading for instead of reading of puts up another fight, one that has to exist behind the scenes by design to work. The fight we’re fighting is to build the spaces we want to live in and push back against the ones we’re told are our only option—but don’t have to be. Instead of headlines of doom and flames day in and day out, we can have other lines—lines of poetry, bylines, lines that enchant and astound us—if only we read to enlighten, explore, discover, and create the worlds we want to live in.

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Ashley Anderson is the author of Sifting the Feminine: Essays on a Woman’s Body (University of Georgia Press). Her creative nonfiction, fiction, and criticism have appeared in Quarter After Eight, Permafrost, Newfound, Tahoma Literary Review, Wraparound South, SLAB, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and others. Ashley currently lives in Columbia, Missouri, where she teaches lots of words, makes a lot of crafts, and listens to a lot of Taylor Swift.