Submission Guidelines
ARB welcomes reviews, essays, fiction, cultural criticism, dispatches, investigative journalism, and poetry. We do not run opinion pieces, academic writing, or polemics.
Book reviews and cultural criticism should be engaging critiques of specific works or of cultural institutions/trends in literature, history, economics, art, media, etc.
We strongly prefer reviews that are not written in the first person. Book reviews should not contain personal anecdotes nor details about the reviewer’s life experiences unless these details reveal a bias, reveal a conflict of interest or provide a direct, meaningful, and unique connection to specific aspects of the text. We are happy, however, to receive submissions of personal essays that reference books.
Journalistic pieces, and all pieces critical of individuals and institutions should be well researched and supported. However, ARB is not a scholarly journal. We do not want footnotes, MLA-style citations, academic jargon, or long block quotes. Avoid the passive voice of academe.
Essays about and dispatches from peoples’ movements, from artistic and cultural movements, and from direct actions can be written in the first person. Avoid the first-person plural unless the piece is written explicitly by a collective. Avoid expansive claims about the supernatural, semi-mythical ancestors, and undifferentiated political subjects such as “the People” or “the masses.”
Know your audience—ARB readers do not need general primers on the evils of capitalism, tutorials on the politics of oppression, or the ABCs of anarchism or various sub- and countercultures. Nor should any piece include direct address—do not command readers to look something up online, take some specific political action, or declare what they should already know or think about, or the like.
Avoid “online” linguistic conventions e.g., starting paragraphs with “We need to talk about”, declarations that you are “here for it”, references to popular memes etc. Also eschew political wordplay, e.g., AmeriKKKa, herstory.
Clarity is essential. A strong lede, interesting ideas and an engaging snappy style is more likely to get you published in our pages!
Author bios should be under fifty words and should not contain humorous claims or descriptions of companion animals.
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