Portals

Country specific portals

Old Literature

Community

  • The Well A literate watering hole for thinkers from all walks of life.
  • Fanfiction.net You probably finished ''Pride and Prejudice'' thinking, ''That was fine, but I'd have liked at least one hot encounter between Darcy and Wickham, especially if it involved exposed chests and a healthy slathering of cheap cologne.'' Reader, they've written it. Fan fiction (''fanfic'' to its practitioners) is short fiction -- or less frequently, poetry, plays or novellas -- based on TV shows, movies, and, of course, contemporary and classic literature. Fanfic uses the source's pre-existing characters, tends to be raunchy, and has a lingo that can be as bewildering as it is fascinating (a ''plot bunny,'' for example, is a fanfic story idea). There are several fanfic archives on the Web, but FanFiction.Net is one of the few that include a ratings guide. Moreover, the site's header invites you to ''unleash your imagination and free your soul,'' which sounds like a good idea, so long as your soul isn't horrified into immobility by the site's inclusion of 42 fan fiction stories based on ''The Diary of Anne Frank.''
  • Foetry In addition to being the unacknowledged legislators of the world, poets are a bunch of kiss-ups who scramble around for prizes and teaching gigs like piglets after apple cores. Or such, at any rate, is the premise of Foetry, a Web site devoted to ''exposing the fraudulent 'contests.' Tracking the sycophants. Naming names.'' Although the site's blustery tone can be off-putting, Foetry has helped focus attention on a serious issue confronting the poetry world -- as the number of poets has increased, and with many of those writers spending upward of $25,000 to acquire an M.F.A., the institutions intended to help preserve and develop American poetry sometimes operate as if the art were an 18th-century guild, complete with secret handshakes. Can the poetry world become more transparent? If so, would it make contemporary writing more interesting? And regardless, will the people behind Foetry get their pants sued off? It's anyone's guess, but in the meantime, the mud is flying in the Foetry discussion forums.
  • Godawful Fan Fiction When you have had your fill of slash, gen and 'ship fiction (fanfic terms for various character entanglements), when you groan at the arrival of each new ''Mary Sue'' (a ludicrously empowered author proxy), when you find yourself wishing every story you read had been beta-ed ( i.e. edited), then it's time to visit Godawful Fan Fiction, where the worst fan fiction on the Web is filleted with the hot knife of peer criticism. The Darcy/Wickham encounter mentioned above under FanFiction.Net is just one of many scenarios to have been deboned in the gleefully malicious Godawful forums.
  • Publishers Lunch Publishers Lunch is an e-mail service that provides daily updates on the nuts and bolts of the book world.
  • Identity Theory Includes reviews and a Web log, but its real attractions are Martin Amis, Anthony Lane, Ben Katchor, Andrea Barrett, Christopher Hitchens, Donna Tartt and Thisbe Nissen -- or any of the other 150 or so writers and illustrators whose interviews with the journalist Robert Birnbaum are posted on the site. Birnbaum's interviews are more like off-the-cuff chats, and his calculated informality often elicits responses that are as candid as they are amusing. Here, for example, is Jane Smiley on her hope that older books will remain on bookstore shelves as long as possible: ''I am taking a medievalist's view. That's what I studied in graduate school. And when you are a medievalist you don't study what's good, you study what's left. And you try to find good things in it.'' Even better, though, is Chip Kidd's response when Birnbaum suggests that Kidd has become a celebrity: ''That's nonsense. I'd love it if they asked me to be a judge on 'Law & Order

Blogs

  • La hormiga remolona Literary blog. Autora: Rosana Ferreres. Creado en: Diciembre de 2001. Cinco blogs indispensables para mí son Tecnochica, Divergencias, Cute Overload, eCuaderno y http://www.diariodelviajero.com/ Diario del viajero. La tecnología aparece poco en mis lecturas. Mi libro de cabecera siempre será Al faro, de Virginia Wolf. Una película relacionada con la tecnología que me entusiasma es Blade Runner, un clásico imbatible. Discos hace mucho que no compro porque descargo canciones. Me gustan Coldplay, Julieta Venegas, Juanes, los clásicos de Phil Spector…
  • Bookish.dk
  • Beatrice The best lit bloggers are keen and devoted readers, witty gossips and perceptive critics of the book industry. The worst lit bloggers sound like what you'd get if you seated the title characters from ''Heathers'' around the Algonquin Round Table and gave them a photo of Zadie Smith on a bad hair day. Ron Hogan, who runs Beatrice, stays on the right side of that line. Beatrice delivers daily literary news with an even tone and an open mind
  • The Elegant Variation A literary weblog
  • The London News Review -- Books Diary Easily the funniest of the lit blogs, Books Diary speaks not softly to the objects of its scorn. When the poet and critic Tom Paulin suggested in a recent essay that Wordsworth's use of the word ''mountain'' was actually intended as a reference to the Jacobins (''la montagne'' being the name for the highest benches in the French National Assembly), Books Diary responded with typical restraint: ''This is so eccentric, so semi-demi-hemi-rational, that there's really only one way to argue. . . . 'Stop saying weird, dull stuff. And get a prose style.' '' The ashes of Tom Paulin's critical corpus will be scattered over the Atlantic by Aer Lingus this Thursday. Tough as it was on Paulin, though, nothing can compare to the opening line of Books Diary's recent post on Plum Sykes's novel ''Bergdorf Blondes'': ''This is the most fascinatingly bad book since 'Swan' by Naomi Campbell.''
  • The Literary Dick That's ''dick'' as in ''Private Detective.'' The Literary Dick is an offshoot of the writer Jonathan Ames's personal site, in which Ames and a writer named Michael Wood (no, not that Michael Wood) attempt to answer questions about various literary mysteries posted by readers. Ever wanted to know why Edmund Wilson was called ''Bunny''? Curious about Henry James's testicle injury? Seek here and ye shall find.
  • Maud Newton Maud Newton is a New York writer and former lawyer whose blog is one of the Web's best sources for publishing industry news and general literary chatter. Newton has recently begun running interviews with authors and editors; her encounter with (or should that be ''cross-examination of''?) Brigid Hughes, the new editor of The Paris Review, is the kind of conversation that should happen more often in the book world. Though she occasionally indulges in the chronic vice of the blogs -- has she mentioned her fellow bloggers? And how clever they are? And how much she really, really likes them? -- Newton is usually a reliable guide and a fair-minded reader. Her site's well worth a daily visit.
  • MobyLives Once one of the Web's literary fixtures, MobyLives is currently on hiatus. Nonetheless, the proprietor, Dennis Loy Johnson, deserves to be mentioned here for his famously anti-establishment blog postings (this newspaper's books coverage came under regular fire), his focus on the good work that gets lost in the publishing shuffle and his intriguing guest column series. The MobyLives archive is still active, and includes articles on everything from the effect of the Patriot Act on libraries to the rationale behind the sexy author photos in The New Yorker's debut fiction issue. Dissatisfied with heckling the book world from the back row, Johnson became a publisher himself in 2002, and has handled books by, among others, Bernard-Henri Levy and the notorious Atlantic Monthly polemicist B. R. Myers.
  • The Elegant Variation A literary weblog

Authorship

  • writersnexus.com
  • Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing One of the great treasures of the Web, this site is a listing of every agent and publisher the writer Gerard Jones contacted in his quest to get his various manuscripts published -- in other words, everyone who's anyone. Jones has reproduced many of his e-mail exchanges with his targets verbatim, which in some cases makes the publishing community look like decent, sensitive people doing the best work they can in a difficult field (here's to you, Daniel Menaker!). Other times, not so much. Either way, the site will tell you more about the book world than any five ''How-to-Publish'' treatises combined.

Literary Reviews

See also World Book Reviews.

  • 3AM Magazine The hottest in online literature, entertainment, and music.
  • Abalone Moon Journal of poetry and the arts, with contemporary works by both known and unknown poets and artists.
  • Adirondack Review Quarterly magazine featuring free verse poetry, French an German translations, short fiction, and photography.
  • Alsop Review Poetry, fiction, interviews, reviews, essays by poets and writers about the craft, art and culture of writing.
  • AnotherealmMagazine of short speculative fiction.
  • Arbutus Eclectic mix of quality poetry, short prose, and hypertext in all genres.
  • Archipelago Quality international journal of literature, the arts and opinion.
  • Ariga: Visions "Visions" is the literary/artwork section of an Israeli social justice site (one devoted to matters involving Middle East peace as well as the socially ethical practice of Judaism). The poems, stories, and artwork sometimes have political or religious themes, but just as often address personal responses to love, loss, pain and ecstasy. A visually pleasing site, with many good links.


  • Barcelona Review English-Spanish ezine offering the best of contemporary fiction.
  • Big Bridge A California webzine which contains some terrific poetry, fiction, and artwork/photography. It also publishes chapbooks and selected pieces from "little magazines." An altogether impressive site.
  • Blackbird Foreword Online journal publishing poetry, fiction, drama, essays, interviews, reviews and visual arts explorations by widely known and emerging talents.
  • Blue Moon Review Good selection of new short fiction and poetry.A Virgina webzine that features fine new poetry, prose, plays, writer's notebooks, interviews, and non-fiction pieces. It also offers RealAudio works and a project called "Cafe.Blue," a "virtual cafe in the form of an online mailing list."
  • Bookslut Although it sounds like an adult personals service for fans of ''Madame Bovary,'' Bookslut is actually a friendly literary hub that aims to provide ''insightful reviews, commentary on trends, updated news, and a lot of silliness.'' The editor of Bookslut, Jessa Crispin, is one of the best-known and most devoted lit bloggers; she's also the author of such valuable ''Slutlessons'' as ''How to Talk Like You've Read Something You Haven't'' and ''How to Throw a Bloomsday Party,'' two subjects that presumably are not related. The taste here runs slightly more to Chris Ware and Chuck Palahniuk than Geoffrey Hill and W. G. Sebald, but the site makes a worthy effort to accommodate all visitors. That's what a good Bookslut does, you know.
  • Boston Review Political and literary magazine featuring the best in cultural debate, fiction, poetry, and reviews.
  • Black Book Review Features some of the best African-American writing, reviews, and interviews.
  • Black Issues Book Review Reviews, autor interviews and profiles, lists of popular fiction and non-fiction, and more about the world of Black Literature.
  • Bloomsbury Magazine Online monthly devoted to bringing the latest literature news and comment.
  • Books & Culture
  • Bookforum
  • BookEnds News, reviews, short stories, trade news and top tens from the World of Books.
  • Book Magazine
  • Book Reporter American-flavoured site with hundreds of reviews, author profiles and interviews.
  • Bookwire Portal providing articles on the latest book industry news, access to literary journals and reviews, and an expansive directory of book sites around the world.
  • Boston Review - New Fiction Forum Quality reviews and essays.

  • California Literary Review Irreverent book reviews, thought provoking essays, and interviews with talented authors.
  • Chronicle Review
  • Claremont Review
  • Common Review
  • Complete Review A Selective comprehensive, objectively opinionated survey of books old and new, with useful links to reviews at other sites.
  • CS Monitor Books
  • Contemporary Poetry Review Features poetry criticism, reviews and interviews with distinguished poets, critics, and translators.
  • Context Excellent publication from the Dalkey Archive Press intended to create a historical and cultural context in which to read modern and contemporary literature of the world.
  • Complete Review
  • Copper Canyon Press A Washington state publisher devoted exclusively to poetry. Has published books by Pablo Neruda, W.S. Merwin, Denise Levertov, Kenneth Rexroth, Su Tung-p'o, among others.
  • Crime Time, The Features reviews, news, interviews and more about all that's best in crime fiction.
  • Center for Book Culture This site features full content of "Context," a free print publication dedicated to the development of a literary community, and numerous in-depth author interviews. It is also the site of the Dalkey Archive Press.
  • Conjunctions The on-line version of the Bard College journal specializing in "innovative fiction, poetry, criticism, drama, art and interviews by both emerging and established writers." Contributing editors include Chinua Achebe, John Ashbery, and William H. Gass.
  • Cortland Review Literary magazine featuring original work, mostly poetry, in both streaming audio and text by Charles Simic, Neal Bowers, Mark Jarman, Richard Foerster, R.T. Smith, Kevin Pilkington, Mark Wunderlich, Kelly Cherry, and others. Interviews include Robert Pinsky, Robert Creeley, R.T. Smith, Mark Doty, John Tranter
  • Cosmoetica As a poet, Dan Schneider is, by his own humble admission, ''better than Walt Whitman.'' In between writing the poems that will make him immortal, however -- and he's apparently got more than 10,000 of them -- Schneider has found time to offer a few helpful criticisms regarding his fellow poets and reviewers. If you were looking for someone willing to call T. S. Eliot ''1 of the most grossly overrated writers in the history of the world, & the English language,'' Schneider is your man. His site includes similarly jolly commentary on a large number of contemporary writers.
  • Creative Nonfiction Journal containing only creative nonfiction - book reviews, essays, and information about education and conferences.

  • DoubleTake Magazine Publishes the voices of poets, essayists, short-story writers, teachers, and community-service workers along with the images of documentary photographers.
  • Drunken Boat Quarterly webmagazine of international poetry, translations, reviews, and interviews.
  • Eleven Bulls An organization dedicated to promoting emerging artists and writers in the interest of facilitating a discussion on the future of the Arts. In addition to the monthly online magazine, Eleven Bulls has staged art exhibitions in New York City and Washington, DC, and a collaborative reading.
  • fiction9 Showcase of new fiction, poetry, art, music and film.
  • Frigate Online Magazine Unpretentious review magazine devoted to innovative writing.
  • Granta Respectable quarterly magazine publishing fiction, personal history, reportage and inquiring journalism. Also features documentary photography.

  • The International Fiction Review Excellent review, unfortunately not available online
  • InterText Online fiction magazine publishing material ranging from mainstream stories to fantasy and horror, to science fiction and humor.

  • Jacket Magazine Australian review of new writing, with poetry, creative prose, interviews, reviews, and informative feature articles.
  • January Magazine Pulp literature review.

  • Kirkus Reviews Pre-publication reviews of 5,000 books each year.

  • Lannan Foundation Audio Archive Contains over 65 programs featuring a wide-ranging group of writers, poets, social and cultural activists and thinkers. The archive grows on a monthly basis with fresh audio files from live programs hosted in Santa Fe before a public audience. Each audio file generally has a reading segment by the featured writer or poet followed by a lively conversation between the reader and a colleague.
  • Literary Review Quality fiction, poetry, and essays from many nations to English readers.
  • LitRag Online International journal of contemporary literature.
  • Little Magazine Largely translations from the South Asian languages.
  • Literaturnaya Gazeta

  • Mesquite Review Bimonthly review concentrating on literature and art of the U.S./Mexico border region.
  • Michigan Quarterly Review The University of Michigan's flagship journal, publishing essays, interviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and book reviews. One issue each year is entirely devoted to a special theme: "The Automobile and American Culture," "Detroit: An American City," "Contemporary American Fiction," "The Female Body," "The Male Body," "Bridges to Cuba," etc.
  • Milkweed Press "Award-winning, nonprofit literary publisher of high-quality books that place an emphasis on cultural diversity, environmental stewardship, exceptionally crafted poetry, and insightful literature for adults and children in the middle grades."
  • Me Three Small online magazine publishing both non-fiction and fiction.
  • Metropole Fully downloadable magazine in PDF format which features short fiction and novel excerpts by some of today's finest writers alongside an eclectic selection of non-fiction.
  • Mississippi Review Quarterly journal primarily devoted to short fiction.
  • Missouri Review Site features fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, features, and book reviews published in past issues of this excellent journal.
  • Mudlark Electronic journal of poetry and poetics.

  • Narrative Magazine Features fiction and nonfiction, with writers such as Rick Bass, Joyce Carol Oates, Jane Smiley, Tobias Wolff, as well as emerging writers.
  • New Delta Review A journal of the LSU Graduate Creative Writing Program, features prose, poetry, artwork and literature in translation.
  • New England Review Sample works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction from the respected print quarterly.
  • North American Review Website of the near two-centuries-old literary periodical features selected poetry, fiction, and reviews from the print journal.
  • nowCulture.com A monthly online multimedia publication devoted to discovering emerging talent in the arts. This link brings you to the literary arts page.
  • Nuvein Magazine Features fiction, poetry, film, and music.

  • Poetry Daily Every day, Poetry Daily posts a poem by a contemporary poet, which means that if all American poets were to hock their laptops tomorrow, Poetry Daily could only continue for another fifteen or twenty thousand years. (Yes, there are a lot of poets, and yes, they write a lot of poems.) Perhaps the best thing about Poetry Daily, though -- aside from the occasional terrific piece of writing -- is its archive, which catalogs poetry news from around the world daily.
  • Providence Journal - Books
  • Painted Bride Quarterly Philadelphia-based literary magazine publishing poetry, fiction, essays and art.
  • Pif Magazine Poetry and short stories by emerging writers, as well as book, CD, movie reviews and political commentary.
  • Ploughshares Good samples from current and recent issues of respected literary journal.
  • Poets' Corner This is a poetry-appreciation site featuring poetry discussion groups, a members' gallery, poetry archives, and a "poem of the day" feature.
  • Poet's Haven Online magazine containing poetry, art, stories, essays, reviews, chat, and more.
  • Poetry Daily Poetry Daily is an anthology of contemporary poetry which each day brings you a new poem from books, magazines and journals currently in print. Poems are chosen from the work of a wide variety of poets published in the English language. Our most eminent poets are represented in the selections, but also poets who are less well known.
  • Poetry Hi-Fi This site features audio poetry readings, reviews of music and spoken word record releases, and the opportunity for visitors to participate in a poetry slam.
  • Poetry Magazine Website includes a featured poet section and samples from the print journal.
  • Poets & Writers
  • Potpourri Site provides variety of selections from the past several years of print editions. The selections include writer profiles, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, haiku, and art.

  • Rain Taxi Quarterly publication offering reviews of literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction with an emphasis on innovative writing.
  • Red China Magazine of literature and the arts that "offers a “pool” unique by nature".
  • Richmond Review Online British monthly offering short fiction, poetry, travel essays, and book reviews.

  • Salon Books Book reviews, interviews, and editorial picks from quality news magazine. The site also has plenty of recommendations and audio clips of well-known authors reading their own work.
  • Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Books
  • Shakespeare Magazine Convergence of information from Shakespeare scholars, teachers, and theatre professionals.
  • Slate The Microsoft webzine's Arts and Life section features cultural essays and a weekly poem selected by Robert Pinsky and read by the author.
  • still This peculiarly resonant English site is devoted to haiku and short poems. Its unique look places each poem in the center of an otherwise blank page, thus compelling the reader to consider the words against the context of empty white space.
  • Sycamore Review Well known magazine offers full text of all back issues.

  • Technorati Books
  • tehelka.com - literature News magazine with great section on Indian literature.
  • Taint Magazine
  • Threepenny Review Prestigious quarterly magazine.
  • Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency Literary magazine edited by Dave Eggers.
  • Transcendental Friend Journal of poetry and poetics, literature, art and criticism.

  • The Underground Literary Alliance Karl Marx once said, ''Of all the great inequities of capitalism, perhaps none is so heartbreaking as the slush pile at Random House.'' Fortunately, the Underground Literary Alliance is here to change all that. Led by an impresario who goes by the name King Wenclas (like the Christmas song, only burlier), the rough-and-tumble populists of the U.L.A. are determined to shatter the snotty New York publishing scene and bring good ol' two-fisted, hard-working, not-terribly-well-written fiction back to the masses. Accordingly, they have caused ruckuses at readings, fired out screeds with titles like ''The Art Revolution vs. Corporate Art'' and gotten into shoving matches with the writer Thomas Beller (the ''moody giant,'' in Wenclas's poetic description of the fracas). Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men?
  • Underground Voices Monthly magazine "about addictions, alcoholism, mental illnesses, psychiatric sessions, torments, confessions, purging".
  • Unhinged Online magazine of horror, dark, and speculative fiction.

  • Village Voice
  • Village Voice Literary Supplement (VLS)
  • Wilson Quarterly
  • Word Weaving Book reviews, articles, interviews, and columns geared towards writers.
  • Web Del Sol Portal hosting over 25 literary publications and publishing original fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews. Granted, the Web del Sol site is so confusing that it sometimes seems to have been designed by monkeys flinging paint. If you're willing to spend the time, though, you won't regret it; Web del Sol is a sprawling Internet hybrid that acts as a portal to many different literary magazines (Painted Bride Quarterly and Southwest Review among them), and also contains assorted interactive features, various hypermedia gewgaws, a kitchen sink, several book columns, another kitchen sink, a large amount of original writing and the lost treasure of the Knights Templar. The general aesthetic here is ''the more the merrier''; though the site hosts No: A Journal of the Arts, which specializes in experimental writing, it also promotes the poetry critic Joan Houlihan, who absolutely loathes the stuff. The site's founder and editor, Michael Neff, holds these disparate elements together with enthusiastic good will.
  • Wild Thoughts A journal devoted to Environmental writing
  • Word Riot Online literary magazine of experimental and non-genre prose and poetry.
  • Words Without Borders Everyone hates a do-gooder, especially when he speaks Norwegian. Still, it's impossible not to admire the intelligence and idealism of Words Without Borders, a site devoted to the translation of foreign writing into English. As the site administrators point out, half of all the books in translation are translated from English, but only 6 percent are translated into English -- an extraordinary imbalance that can't help affecting the way people in different parts of the world view each other. A recent issue, focused on religious literature, included Abbas Saffari's wry Adam-and-Eve poem ''Our Story'' as well as Adolfo Albertazzi's tale about a demonic spirit that resists all attempts to banish it, only to be overcome by a German professor's stunningly boring lecture on demonology.
  • WriteThis Mixed genre e-zine, includes fiction, poetry, interviews.
  • Zoetrope: All-Story Magazine, founded by Francis Ford Coppola, featuring online submissions and reviews of short stories.
  • Zyzzyva This attractive San Franciso journal publishes exclusively poetry, prose, and artwork by West Coast writers and artists. Its site features selected works from the print journal.

    Literary Journals other countries :
  • David Orr, a lawyer with Wollmuth, Maher & Deutsch in New York, reviews poetry for Poetry magazine and other publications.

Literary Journals