PopMatters welcomes articles for smart, culturally engaged readers at graduate-level comprehension. Our work bridges academia and popular culture. Our content is indexed in academic databases via ProQuest. We publish for posterity, know and respect the history of their subject, and accepted articles reflect these sensibilities.
Note: Due to the well-documented economic factors challenging independent publishing, we are not able to provide remuneration for your article(s). We do, however, provide our excellent reputation -- since 1999 -- and our educated, savvy, highly desired reading demographic.
Before you submit your article, please be sure to:
1. Identify the source if you are discussing an item, e.g., the URL to a [book/cd]'s publisher/label page or full identification of an older vision of a [book].
2. If you're writing about a film, identify how you saw it: in the theatre, at a festival (provide URL to that film's page on the festival site), online (identify the streaming source), on Blu-Ray (provide URL to distributor).
3. If your article is an interview or, in any capacity, you have worked with a publicist, provide the name and the email address of the publicist you worked with at the top of your article.
4. Include reputable sources and cite your sources.
4a. Within the article, link short, relevant phrases to the online source. If none, cite the author's name and year in the parentheses following. Provide Works Cited at the end of your article when relevant: author name, article title (linked, if online), publication, and publication date. We do not publish footnotes.
6. Italicize album, book, game, and film titles, but songs and chapter headings should be in quotation marks (straight quotes, please – no curly quotes). If punctuation is not included in the song/chapter title, then it should be placed outside the quotation marks. (e.g., British-style punctuation.)
7. Please avoid overused words and phrases such as "great" (and all its iterations), "had" (and the wordiness that accompanies it), and "in order to".
Style Notes: First name, last name, last name thereafter. In film, avoid confusing the actor's name with the character's name.
Include a 2-3 line bio; mention other publications you've published with, books published, etc. No jokey or self-deprecating bios, please.
Provide your social media account address with your article submission.
If your work is published with PopMatters, please promote it with reputable individuals and publications. Share our social media efforts. ("Liking" alone has little effect.)
Thank you for your interest in publishing PopMatters. We look forward to seeing your work.
PopMatters welcomes reviews (around 800 words), essays (min. 1,200 words), interviews (min. 1,200 words) and short blog entries (under 800 words) on a wide range of topics in popular culture, past and present.
(Note: This Submittable page is for writers only. Artists and publicists, please DO NOT post here. See PopMatters About page, found here. Thank you.)
PopMatters publishes for posterity. Our roots are in academia, and our mission is to educate as well as entertain, with an awareness of our place on the cultural/historical continuum – that's the matters in PopMatters, that's what differentiates this online magazine, est. 1999, from other "pop culture websites". Readers rely on PopMatters for articles that meet their intellectual caliber.
PopMatters welcomes articles on a wide range of subjects in culture throughout the globe, past and present, and for those who dare, the speculative future. PopMatters' writers, like PopMatters' readers, are educated, informed, pop culture savvy, located throughout the world -- and they know their history – and they bring this level of engagement to the articles they present to our readers. Writers interested in bringing their intelligence, creativity, and passion to this fine magazine are welcome and appreciated.
Submit only your "final" version of the article -- no drafts. An editor may contact you regarding revisions. By submitting your essay to PopMatters, you agree to work with an editor in the event revisions are needed.
You may also pitch a single article or a series of articles here. We'd love to hear your ideas.
Ensure proper attribution to cited sources (magazine-style attribution in parenthesis following the citation -- no footnotes, please). Accepted essays will convey a strong historical understanding of the subject matter, draw from real examples (e.g., how you feel about a film is not of interest -- what you know about it and its predecessors and contemporaries, however, is critical) and be written in an erudite yet entertaining magazine-style manner for our savvy readership.
We highly recommend you run your article through Grammarly before submitting: https://app.grammarly.com. It's free, it's safe, and it's well-tuned to online publishing. It won't help you with your thesis statement - it is but a guide - but it will catch run-on sentences and other frequently encountered errors.
For examples of the diversity of topics and range of approaches we welcome, please look at PopMatters features archives.
Please include a summary, your bio, and links to your published work with your article. Finally, please provide your Twitter address.
Before submitting your essay, please sign the PopMatters Writer's Agreement, found here.
Thank you for your interest in PopMatters.