Magazine Submission Guidelines
About the Magazine
Founded in 2019, GCAS Magazine is a reader-supported ad-free digital magazine that is committed to supporting the work of scholars and aspiring writers who want to straightforwardly articulate developments and stories in the areas of social and political thought, philosophy, religion, and culture and the arts.
We are a trans/interdisciplinary outlet that believes in publishing ideas and uniquely human stories that promote diversity of thought and dialogue. That’s why we encourage submissions from everyone, but we especially seek out work by people of color, LGBTQIA+, disabled creatives, and other marginalized groups who write and actively create work in all the categories we seek to publish in GCAS Magazine.
In the pages of our digital magazine, writers share their intellectual explorations, experiences, expertise, and struggles via three well-founded forms:
magazine articles
We accept topic-driven articles with human stories ingrained, personal essays, and poems with a creative bend that reflect on past or current events. We do not accept fiction. Pitches are preferred to pieces written on spec. We like good surprises because we often don’t know what we’ll like until we read a little about your idea. While there’s no minimum length for articles and essays, we try to stay under 7,000 words, but that’s not a hard rule. Poetry submissions should be around 40 lines, max. We use mixed media in our magazine articles, which includes text, video, pictures, and audio as long as the media makes sense for the context of the story.
Interviews
GCAS Magazine publishes interviews with intellectual and radical thinkers from all backgrounds. We’re looking for interviews with people that are both well-known and obscure, so long as the interview stretches us intellectually and remains accessible to a general audience. Interviews are usually +/- 3,000-6,000 words and can be abridged and edited for brevity and clarity. We publish only question-and-answer-style interviews: no profiles; however, a brief introduction to set the interview in context is expected (i.e., who the person is, where the interview is being conducted, and why the individual is being interviewed).
Pitches for interviews are preferred to interviews already prepared. In your pitch, tell us who you want to interview, what stands out about them, why GCAS Magazine readers might be interested in reading about this person, and what topics you plan to cover. If you have a prepared interview to submit, we’d still be open to considering it so long as you can explain what makes this interview a good fit for GCAS Magazine.
Longform
“Longform” writing can mean different things to different people, but for us, it means there are some stories that just need more space to flesh out a uniquely dynamic set of events and ideas, using a narrative form of writing. These are stories that are longer than a typical magazine article, but shorter than a novella (anywhere from 7,000 to 20,000 words).
With our longform pieces, we’re looking for stories where characters and story come first and the ideas and context serve as the narrative drive. We want full-length pieces, with an enrapturing beginning, engrossing middle, and an ending that leaves us needing another storytelling fix. While a single piece can cover a swath of topics or just a one or two topics, it absolutely must be driven by investigative reporting or first-person experiences.
We seek ideas that have never been previously published are happy to consider chapters from forthcoming books or recent (within the last year) that fall within our aesthetic and topical parameters.
We use mixed media in our longform stories, which includes text, video, pictures, and audio as long as the media makes sense for the context of the story.
What we’re not looking for…
Inaccessible scholarly articles, news dispatches or analyses that round-up a subject or an event without a story or human angle, political or philosophical treatises, self-help articles, shamelessly self-promoting drivel, college/grad school academic essays, writing that’s not yours.
A few other notes…
Simultaneous submissions are accepted in all forms. We ask that you let us know your work is a simultaneous submission in your pitch and to notify us immediately if the piece is accepted for publication elsewhere by emailing us at [email protected].
We accept pieces that have been published elsewhere, either in full or in part, so long as the work is the author’s and the previous outlet has given permission for syndication.
Feel free to submit your pitch and writing under “Name Withheld” or under a pseudonym if it fosters honesty and makes you feel comfortable given the topic you are writing about. If you chose to do this, please let us know in your pitch.
Please use the Pitch Submission Form below to submit your pitch. If accepted, we will be in contact with you.
