How to Subscribe to Image Journal and What You Get
You can subscribe to Image through the journal's subscribe page at imagejournal.org/subscribe. A subscription delivers the quarterly arts journal to you, and the site also offers a free weekly newsletter called ImageUpdate. If you want a literary and arts quarterly that engages religious faith and spiritual questions, this is the direct path to getting it.
What Image Journal Is
Image is a literary and arts quarterly founded in 1989. Its stated mission is to foster contemporary art and writing that grapple with the mystery of being human, specifically work that explores religious faith and spiritual questions. It describes itself as a forum for the best writing and artwork informed by or grappling with religious faith, and as a community gathering readers, writers, artists, and art-appreciators both in person and online.
That framing matters for your decision: this is not a general-interest magazine or a news weekly. It is a curated quarterly with a specific orientation toward faith and art.
What a Subscription Gets You
The core benefit is the quarterly journal itself, delivered to you. Based on the current issue content shown on the site, a typical issue includes:
- Fiction — e.g., "Glass Blowers" by Thea Swanson
- Poetry — e.g., work by Lawrence Joseph, Li-Young Lee, and Allison Seay
- Visual art — e.g., "In the Studio" with Eileen Ryan
- Essays — e.g., "An Object Arrived" by Lia Purpura
- Culture writing — e.g., writing on Karen Russell's The Antidote by Amy Bornman
- Interviews and features — e.g., a conversation with George Saunders on afterlives
The current issue also features writing by Molly McCully Brown, KC McGinnis, Robert M Geraci, Marcus Clarke, Miral al-Tahawy (fiction in translation), and Kyle Abbott Smith, among others. The cover art for the issue is Eileen Ryan's Spiritual Microbiome: Notes on Blood and Water (detail), 2024, an installation with sheep's blood agar and holy water.
So the value proposition is breadth within a specific niche: fiction, poetry, visual art, essays, and cultural criticism, all curated around faith and spiritual questions.
The Free Option: ImageUpdate
Before or instead of subscribing, you can receive ImageUpdate, described on the site as a free weekly newsletter featuring the best from Image and the world of arts & faith. This is a low-commitment way to sample the journal's sensibility and see whether the full quarterly is worth it to you.
How to Subscribe
- Go to imagejournal.org/subscribe (the site also lists www.imagejournal.org/subscribe).
- Follow the subscription flow on that page to choose and purchase your subscription.
The site's pricing signals point to "subscribe," "subscription," and "purchase" as the relevant actions, with the subscribe page as the entry point. Specific rates, term lengths, and any login requirements are not stated in the available site information, so check the subscribe page directly for current pricing and terms.
Is It Worth Subscribing?
Choose a subscription if you want a physical quarterly that consistently publishes fiction, poetry, visual art, essays, and culture writing engaged with religious faith and spiritual questions, and you value a curated, community-oriented journal rather than algorithmic feeds.
Start with the free ImageUpdate newsletter if you are unsure. It lets you judge the editorial voice weekly before committing to the quarterly.