NOTICE: We are a "virtual office," so all queries and submissions must be by email (editors@spiritualityhealth.com). Materials snail-mailed to publisher's office will not be fowarded to editors. If you wish to send snail mail, "pitch" it first via email, and if one of the editors wants to receive it, he or she will email you an address. Please read the following Writers, Publishers, Artists/Photographers, and Advertorial Seekers guidelines carefully.

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.

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.

We look for articles that are:

• Useful to our readers (i.e., they can relate the material to their own lives)
• New news, newsworthy, off the beaten path but accessible to readers in their personal lives
• Educational, giving our readers insights into the ideas, discoveries, practices, and traditions that are shaping spirituality today (always with an eye toward usefulness)
• 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.

Recommendations for unsolicited submissions:

FOR WRITERS:

Short items in our Updates & Observation (U&O) department are the best way to let us get to know you. They run 50 - 400 words. For a sense of what we use, please read the U&O department. Shorts should be news that will be current with a 4-month lead time. Since they are so short, it is usually best to write them rather than pitch an idea. Send them as Word for PC (with ".doc" not ".docx" extension) document attachments.

The editors have query meetings only once every couple of months, so please be patient with our response time.

Features may run from 800 - 2,500 words (or, occasionally, more — if it’s really that interesting). Best to pitch the idea rather than send a manuscript.

Familiarize yourself with the magazine before querying. Past issues are available on our website. Search key words to see if we have already done an article very similar to your pitch before you send it. As a rule, we do not do follow-up features or a series of articles on one subject.

Please read all of the following rules and tips:

• All media (book, dvd, music) reviews are written by our media editors. Body Practices, Transformative Travel, Open Heart Open Mind, and Care of the Soul 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, 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 right 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, 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?
• 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.

SEND QUERIES AND SUBMISSIONS TO editors@spiritualityhealth.com. Some email addresses bump messages from spiritualityhealth.com, mistaking it for spam. If you have written and have never received a response from us, put spiritualityhealth.com on a safe list (particularly earthlink users), and try us again.

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.

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

FOR ARTISTS:

ARTISTS/PHOTOGRAPHERS
Art (illustration) queries and "picture features" along with Internet links to samples should be directed to Thomas Kachadurian at tom@spiritualityhealth.com. Also contact Tom if you have questions or comments about art in Spirituality & Health.

FINE ART QUERIES FOR THE "OPENING" DEPARTMENT
Send a press release announcing your art show four months before the opening, along with online links to the work, to editors@spiritualityhealth.com. See an example of a printed "Opening."

FOR PUBLISHERS:

SUBMIT BOOKS FOR POSSIBLE REVIEW
If you have books you would like us to consider reviewing, please contact our media editor:

Editors / Spirituality & Health Magazine
129 1/2 East Front Street
Traverse City, MI 49684

Note: This address is for books for review only. Please do not send editorial submissions here. See writers' information (above) for editorial submissions.

Because the media editor receives hundreds of review copies, she is unable to give publishers or publicists "status" reports on your titles. Please do not follow up to find out if something has been received or if it is being considered for review. Ms. Shaw will contact you if something is chosen for review in the magazine and will send tear sheets.

BODY PRACTICE BOOKS, VIDEOS AND DVDs
Should be sent to:

Editors / Spirituality & Health Magazine
107 Cass Stree Suite C
Traverse City, MI 49684

No follow-up emails or calls to Mrs. Mann. She will contact you if she decides to feature your material.

SUBMIT FILM AND MUSIC FOR POSSIBLE REVIEW

We review a small number of CDs and DVDs. Send them to:

Editors / Spirituality & Health Magazine
107 Cass Stree Suite C
Traverse City, MI 49684

Note: This address is for film and music for review only.

FOR ADVERTORIAL SEEKERS:

We don't do product editorial, and sample submissions sent to the publisher's office will not be forwarded to the editors who work in home offices around the country. However, if you have a REAL news angle, feel free to send a press release to editors@spiritualityhealth.com.