What's it all about?

An online literary magazine powered by its readers

If you wish to submit work to us, please visit our submissions page.

The inception of Lit. 202 comprised a meld of frustration and ambition: frustration with the modern publishing industry, and the personal literary ambitions of our editors, for we are as much writers as we are readers! We like to think of Lit. 202 as the bridge between publishing on your personal blog and publishing in The New Yorker, for worthy example. Whether we, as authors, like it or not, the modern industry is all about exposure. The illiterate influencer with 100,000 followers will get a publication deal long before the genius writer who scrawls away in their attic and sends the occasional query to the usual household names.

It is worth noting that we are not at present able to offer authors compensation for their work; likewise, we do not earn money from the platform. We are a non-profit. All running costs are covered by us personally and by the odd generous donation. We do not run adverts on the site, nor do we receive income from any source other than donations, which go right back into improving our readers' experiences. We exist solely for the love of great literature, and to give exposure to those who might otherwise, for whatever reason, struggle to get it.

What we cannot offer in monetary compensation, we can offer in a promotional sense. Every piece of work we publish we promote incessantly via every available means. We publish every issue for free online as well as in print. Contributing authors will receive a copy of the issue in which their work is published.

As for the name, there is the obvious association with the American system for numbering levels of higher education, with which I was of course familiar. But actually, I decided upon the name whilst flipping through Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov — one of my favourite novels. The passage which inspired me reads thusly:

Instead I asked him about one of my newly acquired students who also attended his course, a moody, delicate, rather wonderful boy; but with a resolute shake of his hoary forelock the old poet answered that he had ceased long ago to memorize faces and names of students and that the only person in his poetry class whom he could visualize was an extramural lady on crutches. "Come, come," said Professor Hurley, "do you mean, John, you really don't have a mental or visceral picture of that stunning blonde in the black leotard who haunts Lit. 202?"