Every feature submitted to Tikkun must be between 800 and 2,400 words in length. We do take longer articles occasionally if they are so tightly argued there is no fluff and no way to make their insightful points more briefly. We do not take articles that have appeared in print elsewhere in the U.S. or on the web. All submissions must be in Microsoft Word format. The system cannot handle PDFs.
Click here to visit our online submission site, create an account for yourself, and submit your manuscript.
How to Get Published in Tikkun
Before submitting an article, ask yourself the following question: “Do I know what Tikkun has written on this topic in the past few years? And does my piece build on that, taking it into account either by critiquing what Tikkun has said or by adding to or modifying or moving beyond it?” Critique is always very welcome — we delight in serious challenges based on an understanding of the issues that we’ve addressed. One goal of our magazine is to create an ongoing community of discourse that grows over the years. So please do read and subscribe to Tikkun before trying to write for us!
We’re not likely to print articles about your travel to some important part of the world, your experience of having your child or your family enter into a particular religious experience, or your own personal path to spiritual enlightenment or religious practice. Nor are we a magazine of facts that “covers what is happening” in some particular area of the world or of politics. What we seek are creative new perspectives on the facts that help us deepen our understanding or contribute to strategies of healing and transformation (which is what the word “tikkun” means).
What to Expect
Due to the short-staffed nature of our nonprofit publication, we are no longer able to send rejection notifications to authors. If we are interested in using your piece, we will contact you. If your article is particularly time-sensitive, please flag that fact in the note you enter when you upload your piece to our online system. If five months have passed and you have not heard from us, that means we are not using the piece and you should feel free to submit it elsewhere. If you — entirely understandably — lose patience with us before that and get the piece accepted elsewhere, please do let us know. We realize that this arrangement is frustrating to potential authors and we hope someday to expand our staff and resume the practice of sending out rejection notices. We beg your forgiveness and thank you for understanding our current limitations.
Online Publication / Print Publication
Now that we have launched our beautiful new web magazine site — and now that the print magazine is a shorter quarterly publication — we will be printing at least half if not more of our articles as online exclusive articles. All article submissions will be considered for publication either on the web or in print. If you are only interested in one medium, please alert us to that fact in the note you enter when you upload your piece to our online system.
Feature Articles
We welcome articles on religion/spirituality, social change, politics, economics, ecology, culture, psychology, and Israel/Palestine. What we look for in such pieces are perspectives that interrogate the politics of their subject matter in ways that both advance the pursuit of tikkun olam — social justice and the repair of the world — and break down issues of contemporary concern in completely new and thoughtful ways. Every feature submitted to Tikkun must be between 800 and 2400 words in length.
While we include well-argued pieces from many perspectives, including those arguing against our ideas, we are particularly seeking writers who can apply a spiritual progressive worldview to their topic—whether that’s recent movies, the West Bank, global warming, or gay rights. Read our Core Vision for pointers. Our Rethinking Religion section welcomes theological and social investigation into love’s prophetic challenge to all religions. Our Politics and Society section needs writers who believe that the great powers of this world, especially governments and corporations, can be moved toward their true function: the service of and caring for humanity and the biosphere as a whole. Submit a feature article.
Reviews: Books, Film and Music
Book, film, and music features must be no longer than 2400 words in length. A review of 500 or 800 words is more likely to be published than a longer one. We would prefer reviewers cover works that are less than a year old (or are about to be published) and have not already received substantial media attention. We welcome reviews of books on all the topics mentioned above. We are seeking reviewers with smart spiritual insights: not New Agey, but progressive, tikkunish.
Our goal is not to learn about the book being reviewed, but for the reviewer to use the book as a pretext to teach us something about the nature of reality as understood by the reviewer and perhaps stimulated by the book — and something that readers of Tikkun would not likely have been exposed to before reading the book review. The only exception to that is if you are reviewing an author that our readers would really like to know about because that person is so famous that they will be engaged just because the figure being discussed in the book or its author is so important: think of Philip Roth, Bob Dylan, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or someone of equal fame. Submit a review.
For information on submitting poetry, fiction, art, and videos, visit our general submissions page.