You can admit it and I won't judge you. You don't consider literary or academic magazines to be your cup of tea when it comes to publishing your stuff. You prefer glossies, or, more specifically, places that can pay you a lot. I understand.

If you're more of an essay writer than a reporter, where can you publish your first person pieces, then?

Actually, a lot of publications have small niches for first person pieces--you have to check out your ideal publication, see if they have nonfiction areas and see if they're pitchable.

Plenty of women's magazines publish first person pieces, but know two things. Before you even think about submitting, ask yourself why a magazine would want to publish it over every other essay being submitted. It helps to be timely and/or controversial. Your essay about how you broke up with your boyfriend and drank a lot of margaritas probably won't fly.

Secondly, unfortunately, most women's magazines only publish essays from well-known, or at least very established writers. That's not to say you can't break in but it's good to have backups.

A very sweet little backup would be the New York Times. While your chances of being accepted by them are slim, you can submit to the Modern Love section of the Sunday Styles, as well as the True-Life Tales section of the Sunday Magazine (you can find submissions guidelines for Modern Love online. I haven't gotten permission yet from the editor on how to tell you to submit to True-Life Tales but you can figure it out with about two minutes of digging.)

If you can't get in the Times read through your favorite newspaper and see if there are first person pieces within. One of my first good clips was publishing an essay in the Chicago Tribune WomanNews section. The more offbeat parts of your newspaper might like a timely/universal piece.

Finally, there are plenty of spots to publish essays online, which are obviously not the glossies, but some pretty much are on par. Got something a little freaky-deaky? Send it to Nerve.com. Perhaps controversial but not as sexual? Try Salon. These sites won't pay as much as a high-circ magazine but they're very good clips and your piece would get very good readership.

Now, just so you know, the preceding advice is not scientific or based on deep conversations with intelligent editors/other freelancers. They're my own observations, and I was drunk while I wrote it, so leave me alone. But those leads have worked for me to some extent, so they might work for you too.