Note: We are a "virtual office," so all submissions and queries must be sent via email (editors@spiritualityhealth.com). Materials snail-mailed to the publisher's office will not be forwarded to editors. Please read the following guidelines cafefully.

Spirituality & Health is a nondenominational bi-monthly magazine that reports on the people, practices, and ideas of the spiritual renaissance in contemporary society and their impact on personal and community well-being. It provides readers with practices to aid them in their own spiritual formation and strives for journalistic objectivity in the presentation of stories about specific religions and denominations.

About our audience
Our audience is made up of seekers who may or may not be traditionally religious. They:

-Share the desire for a life that’s meaningful;
-Are fascinated and encouraged by new, often barrier-breaking ways of thinking;
-Appreciate having a guide to help them navigate between those who claim to have absolute answers and those for whom any answer will do; and
-Are eager to explore practices that bring deeper connectedness and greater meaning to all their activities, and that can energize whatever existing religious or spiritual commitment they may have.

About our editorial content
We look for articles that are:

-Useful to our readers
-Newsworthy, off-the-beaten path and accessible
-Educational, giving our readers insights into the ideas, discoveries, practices, and traditions that are shaping spirituality today
-A forum for the great thinkers and the average person, where barriers between disciplines can be broken down and new avenues explored and critiqued
-Rich in new information (dates, contacts, web sites, etc.) about events, resources, media, research, people, and activities
-Personally meaningful through stories, anecdotes, and humor.

 

WRITERS' GUIDELINES
Please familiarize yourself with the magazine before querying. This is the best way to get a sense of what we're looking for, in terms of content, voice and style. Past articles and issues are available here on our website. Search key words to see if we have already done an article similar to your pitch. As a rule, we do not do follow-up features or a series of articles on one subject.

Departments: Short items in our Updates & Observation (U&O) department are the best way to let us get to know you. Pieces in this department run between 50 and 400 words. Newsy items should be current, with a four-month lead time. Since these pieces are so short, it is preferred to send them in written, rather than send us a pitch.

Features: Features may run from 800 to 2,500 words. In this case, it is best to pitch the idea rather than send a manuscript.

Before querying, please read the following tips:

-All media (book, dvd, music) reviews are written by our media editors. Care of the Soul, Our Evolving Selves, Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler, Close to the Ground, Dream Life, Zenvesting, and Transformative Travel are staff-written; please do not query these departments.

-We do not accept fiction, poetry, or music submissions. No exceptions.

-Please do not offer to do a column for us.

-We publish news, research, and fact; we publish personal experience, material about religious and spiritual beliefs, traditions, and practices; we DO NOT PUBLISH personal experience or beliefs presented as fact. We provide information; we do not tell people what to think about it or what to do. For instance, do not pitch a piece about chakra anatomy, stating that using its principles will make you healthy. Do not pitch a profile of a guru stating that he or she is "an enlightened master." These would be beliefs presented as facts.

-We do not publish articles about specific spiritual or alternative healing modalities unless they have been scientifically scrutinized and peer-reviewed. We have no way to verify claims or fact-check individual practitioner's stories about alternative modalities, so we rely on peer review from professional journals to do so. We are very interested in new (within the last six months) reputable research studies on such modalities for Updates & Observations. Read the section to see what we use. We generally do not publish personal essays about individual healers' healing practices.

-Most profiles are staff-written.

-We publish very few personal essays. If you have essays that you can cut to 500 or words or less, send them for Updates & Observations. Longer essays appropriate for features should weave news/research/vibrant writing with personal experience.

-We are not New Age. We are news-, research-, and study-based. No psychic or channeled material please. No stories about psychics or healing modalities with no scientific scrutiny of modality and results.

-We applaud people healing through writing, and we encourage you to write your experiences for that purpose, but we are inundated with personal essays about how people healed from various diseases, or how they recovered from a death of a loved one, and we discourage submission of these. We believe they are a worthy personal exercise, but generally not the right fit for S&H features.

-Professional credentials matter. Our features are written by experts in their fields. Expert credentials include Ph.D., M.D. and other academic degrees, publication of books on a subject, or a background as a teacher or practitioner. (Life coach generally is not an acceptable credential for writing about psychological subjects, nutrition, medicine, etc.) Please be specific about your expert credentials: What subject is your academic degree in and where did you earn it; where have you taught; what professional journals have peer-reviewed and published your work; who published your new book; if you're a journalist, where have your articles been published and on what subjects, etc.

-We are a virtual office with editors in various home offices around the country, so email is the only way to contact all of us. No phone calls please.

Ready to send in a pitch? Here's how:

Please start with a brief query. Tell us what you’d like to write about and why we should run the story. Tell us why you’re the right person to do the article. If you have certain experts in mind, name them. If you have the inside track on a new study, let us know. Be open to our asking you to do a short item for us. We need a lot of them covering a variety of topics, and they’re a great way for us to get acquainted.

Please send all queries in Microsoft Word (with ".doc," not ".docx" extension) to editors@spiritualityhealth.com. Be patient with our response time, as our editors only have query meetings once every few months. Note: We may consider your piece for one of our newsletters, or for website content, most of which is not paid work.

Some email clients bump messages from @spiritualityhealth.com addresses, mistaking them for spam. If you have written and never received a response from us, put spiritualityhealth.com on a safe list (particularly Earthlink users), and try us again. However, our editors may only contact you if your work has been chosen.

Fees are negotiated on a per-story basis, based on length, experience, complexity, etc. 
 

GUIDELINES FOR ARTISTS & PHOTOGRAPHERS
As with writing, please familiarize yourself with our magazine before sending us a pitch.

Departments: In each issue, our "Opening" department features the work of a photographer or artist who has an upcoming exhibition. To send in a fine art query for this department, send a press release announcing your art show four months before the opening, along with links to your work, to editors@spiritualityhealth.com

Features: Pitches for art (illustration) and photo features, along with links to samples, should be directed to art and production director Thomas Kachadurian at art@spiritualityhealth.com.
 

GUIDELINES FOR PUBLISHERS
If you have a book, CD, DVD or other piece of media you'd like us to consider reviewing, please send it to our media editor:

Spirituality & Health Media
attn: Media Editor
107 Cass St.., Suite C
Traverse City, MI 49684

Because the editors receive hundreds of review copies, they are unable to give publishers or publicists status reports on sent-in titles. Please do not follow up to find out if something has been received or is being considered for review. The editors will contact you if something is chosen for review in the magazine.
 

GUIDELINES FOR PRODUCT SUBMISSIONS
We do consider some product editorial. Sample submissions should be sent to:

Spirituality & Health Magazine
attn: Material World
107 Cass St., Suite C
Traverse City, MI 49684

The editors will let you know if they choose the product you represent. Please contact us at materialworld@spiritualityhealth.com with any e-press release info.