Gray's Sporting Journal: Market Spotlight
For this week’s market spotlight, we look at Gray's Sporting Journal, a hunting and fishing lifestyle magazine published seven times per year.
Gray's Sporting Journal: Spotlight Market
Gray's Sporting Journal is a unique hunting and fishing magazine. Unlike many others in the category, it publishes a mix of nonfiction and fiction features with poetry—and no "how to" pieces. In a sense, this makes the magazine a mix between a hunting and fishing magazine and literary journal.
The editors say, "Gray's Sporting Journal caters to the sophisticated, highly-accomplished sportsmen, intent on exploring the why of their next fly presentation or covey rise."
They pay $600-1,250 for features (based on quality, not length); $600 for "yarns;" $850-1,000 for Expeditions pieces, plus $75 per published picture; $100 for poetry.
What They’re Looking For:Gray's Sporting Journal editors say, "We expect competent, vividly written prose—fact or fiction—that has high entertainment value for a very sophisticated audience. ... Because 90 percent of our readers are bird hunters, 85 percent are fly fishers, and 67 percent hunt big game, we're always looking for good upland-bird-hunting, fly-fishing, and big-game manuscripts for these issues and throughout the year, but don't confine yourself to these themes."
They publish one poem per issue that's shorter than 1,000 words. Features may be fact or fiction of at least 1,500 words. Yarns are 750-1,500 words in length. Expeditions are travel pieces of 2,500-3,000 words that "take our readers hunting or fishing someplace interesting and bring the place to life; the story and the writing are at least as important as where you go and what you caught or shot." Expeditions pieces tend to include images.
How to Submit: Submit complete (and polished) manuscripts to editor-in-chief Russ Lumpkin via email (russ.lumpkin@morris.com) with "Gray's Manuscript" in the subject line. All submissions are made on speculation.
Click here to learn more and submit.
This course guides beginning and intermediate writers through elements of how to write a personal essay, helping them identify values expressed in their stories and to bring readers into the experiences described. Writers learn how to avoid the dreaded responses of "so what?" and "I guess you had to be there" by utilizing sensory details, learning to trust their writing intuitions, and developing a skilled internal editor to help with revision.
