firstwriter.magazine final issue - out now

This month sees the launch of the last ever issue of firstwriter.magazine. 

firstwriter.magazine has been published twice a year since 2002, making it probably one of the longest-running online journals on the internet. All good things must come to an end, however, and issue 32 will be the last issue of firstwriter.magazine. Managing Editor, J. Paul Dyson, gave the following explanation about the decision to end the long-running publication:

"When we first set about founding firstwriter.com back in 2001, the magazine was the absolute cornerstone of what we were setting out to do. We wanted to create a small press magazine that wasn't constantly imperilled by the cost of physical printing. The listings of magazines, competitions, agents, and publishers all came later as additional features, but over the years the focus of the site has clearly shifted away from the magazine and towards these databases of listings.

Now that we have ambitious plans for upgrading and expanding these databases, it seemed right to refocus our energies and free up as much resource as possible for making the databases as good as they can be. We therefore took the tough decision to bring the magazine and our two competitions to a close."

The final issue includes the winner and special commendations from our final fiction competition, the Thirteenth International Short Story Contest, as well as fiction and poetry from around the world. It will remain available in the magazine archive along with the other 31 issues for the foreseeable future. You can access the archive at https://www.firstwriter.com/Magazine

If you submitted work for issue 32 you can check to see if your work has been included by viewing the magazine online (click here). If you have submitted work to firstwriter.magazine and your work has not been included in any of the issues already published then unfortunately it has not been accepted. However, you can search for other magazines to submit your work to at https://www.firstwriter.com/magazines.