Christ & Cascadia welcomes the submission of thoughtful essays, reviews, creative writing, and visual or performance art that inspire innovative faith practice and the exchange of ideas among Christ followers—to explore, imagine, and create the future of Christianity in Cascadia. We are particularly interested in works which present innovative, alternative models of Christian practice. And although we primarily focus on perspectives within the Christian tradition, we invite dialogue with all who are interested in exploring the ongoing role of faith and spirituality in the region.

If you are interested in contributing, please review our contributor guidelines below and browse recent posts for a better sense of the content that we accept. When you’re ready, follow the process described below, starting with proposing your idea.

Contributor Guidelines

Originality

We ask that essays be new, not recycled material that has been published elsewhere, except for book promotion and cross-posting. We do accept student papers that have been submitted for class; contact us for a handout on converting student papers into publishable essays.

Book promotion: Authors may adapt and publish excerpts to promote books that are less than one year old.

Cross-posting: We sometimes exchange articles with another publication to share relevant content with new communities and to increase the audience for both publications. For an example, see this article we cross-posted with EcoTheo Review. If you are involved with a publication whose mission overlaps with ours, we welcome cross-posting opportunities. Sharing articles on multiple platforms requires permission from both the author and the platform.

If you publish here and later want to adapt that content for a different publication or purpose, we ask that you (1) change the title, and (2) wait at least one year after the publication date on Christ & Cascadia.

Tips & Audience

Our About page and recently published essays are useful to get to know our audience. To guide your writing, here are some key tips and generalities about writing for our audience:

• Be authentic. Readers tend to be Christ-followers interested in finding more relevant, authentic, and fulfilling ways to live out their faith, as individuals and as communities. They tend to be restless and even a bit dissatisfied with conventional ministry approaches, static church traditions, and stale modes of spiritual practice. They are curious to learn from others’ experiences of innovating new modes of “living Christ” in their contexts. They connect with writers whose voices are engaging, authentic, and relatable—real people presenting their personal perspectives and experiences.
• Keep it real. Readers are everyday people who want to practice faith-life differently, from all walks of life: from farmers to financial planners, parents to pastors, and students to social workers. Essays should be accessible and not be overly academic in tone or overly religious in vocabulary; write for an early college reading level. While our essays can contain citations of other published sources, more compelling cases are supported by stories, illustrations, and personal accounts.
• Location, location, location. We serve the Cascadia bioregion (see About page). All essays should be written with the unique culture, characteristics, and concerns of the region in mind. We place a high value on place and presence; submissions should emphasize the “locatedness” in a specific place and community and emphasize the unique local context factors that have bearing on the given essay topic. Write to, for, and about the people and place of the Cascadia region.

Format

Submissions may include essays, stories, poetry, music, visual art — we are open to any medium that we can add to the website.

• Articles/Essays: Essays should contain 1,000-1,500 words. Book reviews, 500-750 words. Respectful response pieces that add to or challenge existing articles are welcome. If your article requires citations, we prefer them in Chicago style; we can work with you to modify them from other styles, as needed.
• Poetry and creative writing: Length is flexible. There are limits to formatting on our platform; if line and space is important to your work, we can post your piece as an image.
• Images/Photo Essays: Any photos or images of artwork should be hi-resolution .jpg images with a minimum width of 1980 pixels.
• Video and Audio Essays: If you are interested in submitting recorded video or audio, please contact us to discuss technical details.

Submission Process

First, propose your idea by emailing christcascadia@theseattleschool.edu. Include:

• Summary: a 4-5 sentence (100 word) description of your idea.
• Author information: Your full name, degrees or other credentials, current town/city and state/province, and 2-4 sentences (100 word max.) bio. You may include links to sites you are associated with, such as your blog, podcast, or organizations you represent.
• Headshot: high-resolution personal photo of head and shoulders.

We will do our best to reply to you within two weeks with next steps. If we accept your proposal, the process usually includes shaping the idea together, and about three rounds of edits. These edits will help you present your good ideas in clear and compelling ways, and will make sure your piece aligns with our house style guides (based on Chicago Style Guide, 17th Ed.). Please make sure your piece is proofread for grammatical and mechanical errors before submission, so we can focus on the content. Note that even if we’ve agreed on a topic in advance, there is no guarantee of publication. During final edits, we will pair your post with a high-resolution image. If you have photos that you own or have permission to use, we will ask you to provide the name of the photographer and a short description of the photo. We will also get your social media handles so we can tag you when we share.

Typically, we are scheduling articles 6 months in advance of publication, though have some flexibility to post sooner to coincide with book promotions or other time bound events.

When we publish, we share on facebook and instagram and tag you. We ask that you repost and promote your piece on social media and in any other personal and professional networks.