Where to Submit Your Humor Writing: 20+ Market Opportunities
Publications where you can submit satire, literary humor, and humorous essays
Have a humor piece that you want to submit? The good news is that there are lots of publications that run humor pieces.
I’ve been writing and publishing humor for over 15 years, and I compiled these markets based on places currently open to submissions. I’ll periodically update this list as markets come and go.
I’ve broken these markets down by the following categories:
General Satire Markets
Medium Markets
Fake News Sites
Funny Personal Essay Markets
Literary Humor Markets
Categorization is a little tricky, as some markets would fit in more than one spot, but I tried to break them down in a way that would be useful for what writers might be looking for.
Hopefully, this goes without saying, but before you submit to a publication, you should spend some time reading it to make sure your piece is a good fit.
There are many more markets than these, but I tried to include ones that have been around for a while, are accepting submissions, and publish consistently.
Satire/Conceptual Humor Markets
These markets accept satirical humor pieces in most formats except fake news (see below for more info on fake news).
Points in Case: A site with up to 500k monthly readers that takes a variety of humor pieces and jokes. Submission Guidelines.
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: A well-regarded humor website open to short conceptual humor and satire. You can find their submission guidelines here, and I wrote a piece with additional tips for submitting here.
New Yorker Shouts: The New Yorker Shouts section publishes satirical pieces (other sections of The New Yorker run humorous essays, but this is not the place for nonfiction essays). They can take several months to respond, but will get back to you eventually. Submission guidelines.
Chortle is a Substack publication that accepts short (600 words or less) humor pieces.
Weekly Humorist: A humor website that accepts cartoons and satirical humor pieces under 1500 words. Submission Guidelines.
The American Bystander: This print and online publication runs humor writing and cartoons. Submissions can be sent to: submissions@americanbystander.org
Medium Humor Markets
There are several humor-focused pubs on Medium, a site that hosts publications in addition to providing a space for writers to publish pieces on their own. Unless you already have a following on Medium, it’s typically better to submit to one of the publications that accept humor rather than just publishing on your own.
If you put your piece behind the paywall, you have the potential to get paid for your work. In my experience, the pay range per piece varies pretty widely (i.e., less than $1 to over $100, with the upper end being less common). If your article gets selected for Boost, then it tends to make more, so submitting to publications that have Boost can be worth it.
Here are just some of the Medium humor pubs:
The Belladonna: A site for satirical humor pieces by women and nonbinary authors. Submission Guidelines.
Frazzled: A parenting humor-focused publication that runs satirical pieces, fake news, and humorous essays. Submission Guidelines.
Slackjaw: One of the biggest (if not the biggest) humor pubs that is open to most humor formats except fake news. Submission Guidelines.
Jane Austen’s Wastebasket: Open to satirical humor (that doesn’t necessarily have to be literature or history-themed). Submission Guidelines.
Fake News Sites
The most well-known of the fake news sites is The Onion, and you are likely familiar with their satirical pieces, which are formatted like newspaper articles (and sometimes just headlines).
The Onion does not take submissions, and because they and other sites out there are dedicated to fake news, a lot of the general satire sites do not take pieces formatted in the “fake news” style.
However, these are some that do take submissions in the format:
Reductress: Reductress opens for submissions quarterly. To get info on the next opening, email the address at the bottom of this page.
The Hard Times: A fake news site relating to punk music. Fill out the link on this page to apply.
The Needling: A Seattle-based fake news site that lists submission guidelines here.
Broadway Beat: A spot for your theater-based fake news submissions.
Funny Personal Essay Markets
It’s a little hard to recommend a list of these, as there are so many out there, and the short answer is that any market that accepts personal essays is also probably open to funny personal essays (with some caveats, which I go into more detail about here).
However, these are just some of the places I’ve seen run personal essays with humor in them:
Business Insider – This pub runs short (600-word) essays that can sometimes have humor elements in them. Submission Guidelines.
Example: I Booked a Multigenerational Vacation to Bring My Mom and Kids Closer and, Wow, Did it Backfire by Liz Alterman
Huff Post Personal: Huff Post runs personal essays and has sometimes run ones with humorous elements. Pitch guide.
Example: I Had a Baby at 40, And it Was Awesome by Jessica Delfino
Slate: Slate will also run essays with humorous elements. Pitch Guide.
Example:” I Put Everything in My Planner—Even Showering” by Elissa Bassist
Scary Mommy: Scary Mommy is a parenting site that frequently uses humor in their pieces. Reading through the site should give you several examples of essays that blend humor in. Submission guidelines.
Example: “I Was Awful At Sports. Then Came My Kid” by Janine Annett
Newseek’s “My Turn”: My Turn runs personal essays, often with timely hooks.
Example: “At 49, I Became an Accidental Influencer—For a Very Intimate Reason” by Caren Lissner
Regional Magazines: Regional magazines in the U.S. will sometimes run short, lighter personal essays. You can often pick up a copy of these in grocery stores or other spots that have racks of local publications. You can find more about submitting to them here, too.
Example: “Take Your Child to Work Day is April 25” by Shannon Carpenter
If you are looking for more essay markets, I’ve got this guide available for paying subscribers (which you can get access to with a $5/month monthly subscription, and yes, it’s okay to just subscribe for a month or two to get it).
Literary Humor Markets
Some of the publications in other sections are probably also classified as literary, but here is a list of just some of the markets that fall into the “Lit Journal” category that run pieces with humor in them.
The line between what makes something more literary humor vs. not differs, but reading what these sites have run before should give you an idea of the type of style they are looking for.
Literary journals sometimes only open for submission at certain times of year, and response times can be longer (so look out for those in the submission guidelines)
The Offing’s “Wit Tea” section. This lit journal accepts literary-leaning humor pieces in this section. Submission Guidelines.
Defenestration: A literary magazine dedicated to humor that accepts many formats (including poetry, which a lot of other humor sites do not take). Submission Guidelines.
The Rumpus “Funny Women” section: This site for satirical humor accepts submissions from women and nonbinary writers and prefers literary and feminist pieces. Submission Guidelines.
Bonus leads: This old Tweet thread may give you some leads on other lit journals that are open to humor, and Chill Subs can be a good place to look for potential leads.
If you are looking for more markets, I recommend following humor writers you enjoy and seeing where they are publishing (this is how I found many of the examples above).
Looking for more tips on how to write satirical humor pieces? Check out my e-guide:
If you are new here, I’m a humor writer who has published humor pieces in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Real Simple, Wash Post, Parents, and many other publications.
I run this Substack Humor Me, which shares funny stuff and writing tips. Become a free or paid subscriber here:
This is great. Thanks! It's so hard to find information about humor on the internet. Humor writing is such a small niche.
I have a short story that is kind of like a humorous episode of The Twilight Zone. I'm having a bit of trouble categorizing it, though. Literary humor? Satire? ??