Submission Guidelines

At Liberal Currents we publish articles and essays.

Articles are 1500 words or less and published frequently. We pay $200 per article published. Your pitch, if approved, is most likely to be an article. This will be agreed upon up front, and some margin of error on word count will be allowed. If your pitch is approved as an article, and you and your editor struggle to get the final draft below 1600 or 1700 words, we may publish it at that length but still pay the article rate.

Essays are longer than 1500 words. This does not mean they are 1600 words. On average they are 2000 to 3000 words, but they can be longer. These will typically be pieces that cannot done in less than 2000 words. Regardless of the final length, we pay $350 per essay published. We publish these much less frequently than articles, and very often it is one of the Liberal Currents editors who are writing the essays we do publish. If you really believe your submission needs to be an essay rather than an article, you will need to make that case.

The process for pitching Liberal Currents is as follows:

• Write an email to writers@liberalcurrents.com outlining the idea
• The editor who replies may have questions or ask for clarification
• You will either get rejected or asked for an initial draft
• The initial draft will be reviewed before the article or essay is approved for publication
• If we do decide to move forward, an editor will work with you to ready the article or essay for publication

Please adhere to the Liberal Currents Style Guide when writing your article or essay.