Welcome to Kōan

Kōan Literary Magazine exhibits the best of creative nonfiction, fiction and visual art occupying the threshold between the real and the imagined, the everyday and the magical, and the readily credible and the fantastic. Our title derives from a Zen practice to achieve enlightenment. Zen kōans are paradoxical statements that provoke adherents to escape the bounds of human logic. Similarly, we aim to encourage readers to break down barriers deep-seated in writing and everyday life, whether those barriers be social, political, physical or mental.

We are one of the latest magazines at The Paragon Press, an independent publishing house that publishes literary magazines, chapbooks, and novellas.

On this blog, we will be discussing works, writers, and artists that embrace the basis of our theme through their style and messages among other subjects!

Stayed tuned for our staff introductions coming soon and feel free to submit to our magazine at: https://theparagonjournal.submittable.com/submit/117851/kan