Don't Feed the Animals!...and Homes for Your Funny Writing

By Becky Tuch

Once, when I was a child, my grandmother, father and I were walking in a nature reserve. We had recently had a barbeque and my grandmother was carrying a plastic bag full of hamburger buns. Soon a gaggle of ducks began to follow us. They trailed along, quacking, butting their heads into our legs, click-clacking their little webbed feet down the cement pathway. Finally fed up, my grandmother spun around and faced them.

"Leave us alone, you needy ducks!" she shouted. "Go home! Your parents must be worried sick."

When the ducks wouldn't leave, my grandmother started hitting them on their heads with the plastic bag of hamburger buns.

It was funny. If you'd known my grandmother, how defined by hardship her life was, you would have found this incident even funnier. My father, who knew his mother's struggles all too well, had to lean against a tree because he was laughing so hard. 

Sweet mercy, there is nothing like humor to ease the soul.

If you've got a funny story, poem, or essay of your own, here are some places that might be a good fit. Enjoy!

THE ALARMIST is a fresh, new, dark, funny and twisted printed literary magazine published biannually. It’s not about trying to prove how clever or well-read you are, mind – we’re not the Paris Review. We want to buck the modern trend, and tickle and entertain with what we publish.

ASININE POETRY is the journal of asinine poetry, a quarterly publication of asinine poetry, poetry that is, shall we say, asinine. To wit: Not necessarily bad; mostly kinda funny.

BARTLEBY SNOPES is an online literary magazine with several goals in mind. We want to publish the best new fiction we can find. We want to give the many writers out there an opportunity to publish their best work. We want to inspire you to create great works of fiction.

BOOTH publishes one piece or author every Friday, directly on our home page. In addition, Booth publishes an annual print issue, usually in the spring. Booth was established in 2009. Our staff is comprised of MFA Fellows and students in the Butler University graduate writing program. Booth publishes fiction, poetry, non-fiction, comics, lists, and other expert miscellany. We want to read sharp work that is also funny, and/or poignant, and always carried by a rich sense of story and heart. 

CHUM is a printed quarterly magazine that publishes literary fiction, humor, nature and travel essays, film and book reviews, poetry, paintings, drawings and photographs from established writers and artists, as well as those who have never been published before. 

CLEVER MAGAZINE, the ezine for the neglected demographic, was created specifically for those discerning individuals who didn't quite feel "wanted" by the usual commercial websites, and blogs that proliferate the internet. I call that group, "the neglected demographic." Clever has been in continual publication since August of 1998 as a general interest online magazine featuring essays, short stories, humor, the environment, poetry, recipes, an advice column, book and film reviews and a bookstore. Clever's goal is to provide informative and entertaining content for a variety of readers.

DROLL is a quarterly literary journal of prose. We are based in southern Canada, but we serve the world through the Magic of the Internet. Our editorial staff is well-educated, which is to say, entirely unqualified to write with the wit and intelligence we desire. Thus we throw the door open to our writing community in the hopes that we might compile a periodical worth reading, every now and then.

HOBO PANCAKES. Founded by two Bay Area comedians (Femikaze‘s Kelly Anneken and Isa Hopkins), HOBO PANCAKES exists as a forum for humor of all types: from highbrow to fart jokes, slapstick to absurdism, we welcome wordplay (and alliteration!) in all its various forms of hilarity.  The topics are serious, but the interpretations?  They are as delightfully whackadoo as our readers.

INKY SQUIB MAGAZINE is a collective for artists, writers, photographers and film makers. Every 6 weeks we give our team of word hogs a new theme to immerse themselves into. The finishing result is a super unique, super polished package of verbal, visual and written art for the reader to feast upon. Its free of social influence, its free of media twisting and, most importantly, its free. We are always open for submissions. Please go to the top of the home page for details. Inky is the diving board for which you test your fancy new moves. Byo swimmers. 

KUGELMASS is funny. Kugelmass is stories. It is essays. It is poetry. For essays and stories, Kugelmass is 1,000 words or 4,000 words or any count in between. Except 3,258. It can go to hell. For poetry, form and length are open. 

LOWESTOFT CHRONICLE is an online literary magazine, published quarterly, accepting flash fiction, short stories, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Preference is given to humorous submissions with an emphasis on travel. An anthology of the best work is published annually as a 5x8 paperback book. Our mission is to form a global “think tank” of inquisitive, worldly scribblers, collectively striving towards excellence and, if possible, world domination. 

THE NORMAL SCHOOL is a bi-annual journal featuring nonfiction, fiction, poetry, criticism and culinary adventure journalism. We are nestled happily into the California State University at Fresno like a comfy spore in a benign and mighty lung. We dig quirky, boundary-challenging, energetic prose and poetry with innovations in content, form, and focus, which isn't actually as high-falutin' as it sounds. We're just sort of the lit mag equivalent of the kid who always has bottle caps, cat's eye marbles, dead animal skulls, little blue men and other treasures in his pockets.

ONOMATOPOEIA MAGAZINE. Another online lit rag, I know. But the question remains: why not? Who doesn't like a good story? Or beautiful poetry? Or a compelling interview? Or a photograph that opens you up to a new perspective? Or just plain old amazing writing? I know I do. I love it. That's what it's all about.

At THE RUMPUS, we’ve got essays, reviews, interviews, advice, music, film and poetry—along with some kick-ass comics. We know how easy it is to find pop culture on the Internet, so we’re here to give you something more challenging, to show you how beautiful things are when you step off the beaten path. The Rumpus is a place where people come to be themselves through their writing, to tell their stories or speak their minds in the most artful and authentic way they know how, and to invite each of you, as readers, commenters or future contributors, to do the same. What we have in common is a passion for fantastic writing that’s brave, passionate and true (and sometimes very, very funny).

SCISSORS AND SPACKLE. Words in their purist form both cut and repair, sometimes simultaneously.  They have been used to create impact and empires, to bring peace in times of war and set battles in motion.  Words have not been given the credit they are owed.  Scissors and spackle wants to slip back into the power of words and is searching for artists who string them together in ways that make us remember. We are not concerned with what box or title an artist’s work fits into, or how many words it takes them to get there.  We are only interested in the destination. We are interested in fiction with out boundaries. 

TIMOTHY MCSWEENEY'S INTERNET TENDENCY. A great deal of the material published in McSweeney’s is written by kind strangers whose work comes to us via email or in manila envelopes. Our system for reading submissions is intricate and steadily improving, but we’re still a very small organization—McSweeney’s has just a few editors—and some things move slowly. On the other hand, every single submission gets read. Please be patient and understanding, for we want very badly to discover and nurture new and developing writers, and are doing our best.  We’re not concerned about writing degrees or past publications, though, so don’t be daunted if you don’t have an MFA or much in the way of previously published work. 

UNTOWARD. Some time ago, brave men of vision decided literature could be funny. Untoward Magazine knows not when or where this decision took place, but glad we are that it did. Untoward Magazine thus exists to perpetuate humor in literature and so forth, with stories reflective in some way of the fact that it is not an ancillary element of great writing but an essential element. Herman Melville would be rolling in his turgid but also really very complexly amusing, and to that extent misunderstood / under-appreciated, grave were we to suggest otherwise.

Becky Tuch is the founding editor of The Review Review.

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