Formatting and Submission Guidelines for An Injustice!

Updated October 1st 2020

Courtesy of Author — designed by onirical_zubieta

1. Our voice and approach!
2. What we publish!
3. Examples of excellent pieces!
4. How to join the writing team at An Injustice! (currently closed until 06/24)
5. Checklist for your draft submission!
6. Formatting guidelines!
7. Time frame!
8. Contacts!
9. Updates!

Welcome to An Injustice! the home of voices, values, and identities. We’re glad you’ve decided to join us; but more importantly, we’re happy to have you pitch your awesome idea for An Injustice! story, but first, let us introduce ourselves.

If you were to ask me, what we stand for as a publication in one word, my response would be nuance. Nuance can be defined as “A subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound.”

What we do as a publication is to add nuance to discussions and stories that need to be told. We are a platform that’s sole responsibility is giving marginalised voices a base to which they can compete “fairly” against those who have got to where they are due to privilege.

We, as a publication, want to ensure that we bring you the best quality of content that serves our purpose and message. Our goal as a publication has always been to create a space and platform where minority voices could have their say and be heard. We want to foster and increase in diverse thought. We want to change lives while imparting wisdom.

With that in mind, we’re looking for excellent non-fiction writing that is a full body of work with a clear message for the reader. An Injustice! topic areas include but are not limited to, and in no particular order: culture, LGBTQIA, disability activism, sexuality, gender, society, social psychology, mental health, politics, race, justice, women, feminism, equality, addiction, and more.

Our longer features dig into a topic or trend in depth. We are mostly looking for evergreen content with a clear message to be imparted to our readers. What we love is a deep analysis that makes the content more evergreen. Formats we consider include: essays, narrative and reported nonfiction, perspective driven features, oral histories, opinion pieces, first-person essays, Q&As, listicles and informative pieces.

We do not publish rants, statements, letters, fiction and poetry.

We have a 0 tolerance policy on all negative -isms and -phobias. But before you pitch us, please first take a look at what’s on the publication today.

— Please note: As with all publications on medium, we currently are unable to pay our writers up-front for their work. We have plans in motion (such as our Patreon) to raise the money needed to pay our writers for their labour. But in the meantime we would strongly advise writers to join the Medium Partner Program (MPP) and place their pieces behind the paywall so that you can get compensation for your work!

Patreon

What I love the most about this publication is how it unravels conversations to their atomic dimensions. I am forever learning and growing as a person due to the content we bring out. I don’t know how many publication editors can claim that they feel rejuvenated by the quality of stories that they have the honour of publishing. Here are a few of our favourites.

Why Black People Don’t Go Camping by Nikki Brueggeman

This piece received a lot of love all from thousands of people and it is no wonder why. The way Nikki weaves in her story with exposition and knowledge is a work of art. You conclude the piece feeling educated, and it really brings forth the insidious nature of racism. It is evergreen, unique and leaves us hopeful of better to come.

You Were Not Built for this Moment by John Gorman

This piece clearly outlines the dumpster fire that is 2020 and how one American is dealing with watching large-scale societal collapse in real time. The writer has a strong voice full of nuance and angst that brings uniqueness to his message.

Hip-Hop and Black Women — Unrequited Love by Allison Gaines

This cultural take on hip-hop music and the black woman’s role as a caricature of the Jezebel motif exposes misogynoir, cultural nuance and racial injustice for people of color. It’s evergreen in its content and it gives a clear takeaway for the reader.

Please Stop Describing Your Attraction as “Genderblind by Kravitz M.

An evergreen piece the tackles the idea of gender as seen through the lens of pansexuality. In this piece the author outright rebukes the idea of being genderblind and gives strong points against the idea.

Before You #BoycottMulan, Consider the Context by Roc Su

This is a great piece that really brings context to a situation that would have originally thought of as cut and dry. Unlike regular newsy-stories, this piece focuses on analysis and therefore is a lot more evergreen.

Please note

We are not currently accepting new writers. We will resume new writer onboarding in June. Thank you so much for understanding, and we apologise for any inconvenience.

New writers may still request to contribute by filling out our short form; however, we will not respond until we are open again in June.

Before submitting your piece for publication, you should review the following guidelines and ensure your piece meets the requirements below.

1. Titles should be in title case and subtitles in sentence case. Headings should also be in sentence case and be formatted using medium’s inbuilt heading format tool. For more info, please ensure you double check our formatting guidelines below.
2. Feature images should always sit below the title and subtitle and be properly captioned.
3. Please ensure work is laid out and presented in a way to visually attract readers. Play with space and avoid big chunks of text.
4. Give your piece a once over in a tool like Grammarly.
5. Tag your work with one of these headings — Equality, Culture, Gender, Mental Health, or LGBTQ.
6. Please ensure your private note setting is on as this is how we will communicate with you.

Please note: We don’t guarantee that we will publish what you send us. Each submission is carefully reviewed to make sure it meets the standards we are looking for in the publication. If it just needs a little touch up, we will send a private note.

For extensive edits, pieces will be returned with a note. Please feel free to revise and resubmit in your own time!

Regarding removal of content

We work really hard to help you with your content, time that can not be found back if you later decide to place your piece in another publication on this site. Therefore, please note that writers found to be relocating work from An Injustice! to other publications on the medium platform, without contacting an editor beforehand, will face immediate removal from our writing team.

This of course does not include the self-hosting of your content on personal blogs and only pertains to the pieces while they feature on medium.

Note: Should a piece be deemed as not meeting our editorial standards (this includes featuring any negative -isms and -phobias), the piece will be removed and feedback from Zuva will be given.

Here at An Injustice! we want your pieces to be the best versions they can be, not for our benefit but for yours. Our goal is to get everyone who publishes with us curated — we want as many people as possible to see your work.

Below you’ll find formatting guidelines (written by the best of the best) that have helped me with my own pieces.

• General formatting guide — The Best Medium Article Formatting Guide
• Pull and block quotes — The Definitive Guide to Medium’s Quotation Feature
• Title case for titles — Capital and Lowercase Letters in Titles (Title Case)
• Sentence case for subtitles and headlines — Using Sentence Case for Titles, Headings, and Headlines
• Image captioning — Medium Image Caption

Here at AJ, we like to stick a middle finger up to capitalism. While we have tried to be as available as possible, this is simply not sustainable and is indicative of internalised capitalism. After all, all of us on the team have full-time jobs (except Zuva who is studying a full-time degree) and we are currently going through a pandemic.

As a result, draft submissions will only be reviewed Monday to Friday. Even though we won’t be reviewing submissions on a weekend, please feel free to send them through.

We would strongly advise our writers to not publish their pieces, however if you have a timely piece feel free to email Nicole regarding your pre-published piece!

Submissions are reviewed as quickly as possible, so please give it:

• 24–36 hours for your piece to be published (Monday to Friday)
• Submissions will be reviewed Wednesday and Thursday by Nicole + Monday, Tuesday and Friday by Zuva (except for our Patreons, you guys can email us whenever you have sent a piece)
• New writer requests will be reviewed within 14 days!

If your piece hasn’t been published within 36 hours the likelihood is that a note has been left on your piece, so please check them before emailing in.

• Regarding any enquiries about the publication or your submission form entry, please email zuva@aninjusticemag.com (Editor-in-Chief)
• Regarding pre-published pieces that you think may be a fit for the publication, please email: nicole@aninjusticemag.com (Deputy Editor + Head of Acquisitions)
• Regarding all social media enquiries, please email langa@aninjusticemag.com (Social Media Manager)

Our submission guidelines keep changing so we thought to take a page from The Writing Cooperative and keep a log of all our updates!

26th March 2024

• Updated the form to indicate that we will be closed to new writers from now until June. For those with drafts ready, the form will remain active. However, articles will not be reviewed until we open doors once again.

31st August 2021

• Clarified that all pieces published with us can (and will be removed) should they be deemed to not be hitting our editorial standards.

20th June 2021

• Submissions will no longer be collected through Typeform, but through Google Forms instead.

04th November 2020

• Clarified rules on relocating pieces.

30th October 2020

• Further emphasised that the submission portal is for draft submission only.
• Added a new heading in the ‘Join us’ section to ensure there is more clarity for writers regarding who to contact and when.

1st October 2020

We did a complete revamp of our guidelines. We changed how we run to make things easier for our team and for you all. We also decided to make the page a little prettier too! Here are the major changes:

• Complete update of our submission requirements to help with readability and clarity.
• Submissions will only be reviewed Monday to Friday from October 12th
• Submission requests will now no longer be accepted via email but Google Form instead.