Beautiful Design - Best Lit Mags of 2025

Quarterly literary arts magazine publishing creative nonfiction & visual art in print and digital.

Under the Gum Tree is a reader supported, quarterly literary arts magazine, publishing creative nonfiction and visual art. We believe in the power of sharing a story without shame. Too much of the human experience gets hidden behind constructed facades based on what we perceive the world expects from us. Stop hiding. Live a story. Tell it without shame. And by without shame, we mean that the authors and contributors featured in our pages own their story, even the ugly parts, and share it with pure, unadulterated, raw, candid vulnerability.

Each issue of Under the Gum Tree includes seven–ten original nonfiction stories and personal essays, one photo essay, and one cover artist whose work is also featured throughout the interior pages.

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Where The Cool Kids Are Submitting Their Writing: Part 1

A comprehensive guide to journals that regularly nominate work for the Pushcart Prize.

Literary Magazines That Nominate for the Pushcart Prize

Highlights publications that regularly put forward essays, memoirs, and other creative nonfiction for Pushcart consideration.

Nonfiction Magazines That Nominate for the Pushcart Prize

Under the Gum Tree

We consider submissions (2,000 words or less) for the following departments:
Flash: Every issue includes a flash feature, which is a short-short piece of creative nonfiction, under 750 words.
Sound Track: Music sets the tone of a gathering. It changes a mood from depressed to uplifted. This department is for stories on interacting with music and how it interacts with us. Is there a specific song, group or artist that has had a significant impact on your life? Have you had a meaningful live-music experience? Are you a musician who also writes about how music affects the human experience?
 
 24 Frames per Second: This department is for stories on film, perhaps one of the more powerful storytelling mediums. Is there a specific film that has changed you in some way—caused you to think differently or see the world from a new perspective? Are you consistently moved by the work of one particular actor or director?
Those Who Wander: Tolkien famously wrote, “Not all those who wander are lost.” And surely, as writers, we are often inspired by our journeys or the travels of others (and we know, some wanderers ARE lost). Whether travels are from one neighborhood to another, one state to another, one country to another; on vacation or a pilgrimage, for family or for work, so many of these changes in our physical locations trigger meaningful reactions in us and the way we view the world around us. This department is for stories about travel and the individual ways moving around this globe affects us.
Stomping Ground: So much of who we are depends on the relationships in our life, blood or otherwise. This department is for stories about family—and we use that term liberally, because isn't the friend you've had since you were 8, almost 9, years old, more like a sister?
Fork and Spoon: Much of life revolves around food. This department is for stories, and even recipes, on how food, cooking, eating and drinking affect life. The dinner table means different things to each of us—it can be a comfortable place that facilitates intimate communion, but to someone else it might be an awkward place of forced conversation. These food interactions shape us more than we know.

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