Online journals about the theory and practice of creative writing are also available and include: Contemporary Literature, Editor and Publisher, Hollywood Scriptwriter, Journal of Poetry Therapy, Life Writing, Literary Imagination, and New Writing: International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing.

To find out more about journals published for creative writers, you can use an app such as Browzine. Not only does it store all your favourite journals, it enables you to easily find and read the most recent issue from your mobile device (and store them in a bibliographic management tool such as Zotero or Mendeley).

Open Access Journals

Open access journals are often scholarly, but the difference is, they believe in making their research accessible to anyone with an internet connection. This means that you don’t have to have a subscription to read the articles they publish. An example of a peer-reviewed open access journal is Writing in Practice: The Journal of Creative Writing Research – produced by the National Association of Writers in Education.

Finding journal articles by topic

Sometimes you may want to look for journal articles on a specific topic, such as life writing or fantasy fiction. You don’t have to browse for articles using Browzine, but can use a search engine such as Library Search or Google Scholar. Both are good, but they have different functions and it is good to be aware of that. Google Scholar searches scholarly material, but you may not be able to access all of the material whereas Library Search is linked to the CCCU journal subscriptions. Run a quick search in LibrarySearch to find full-text journal articles to read online using key words or phrases connected with your research topic e.g. “horror” or “writing non-fiction”. You can read the Library Search quick guide for more information.

JSTOR is also a popular journal database which provides access to past issues of journals.

If you need a journal article that the university doesn’t subscribe to, try document delivery. It's a great service for that end-of-year assignment.

Library Guide - Creative Writing