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 or details about the reviewer’s life experiences unless those details provide a direct, meaningful, and unique connection to the book being reviewed. (for example you are part of a forest fire brigade and can provide first person confirmation or critique of Kelly Ramsey’s experiences in Wildfire Days).
All book reviews should include a header with the title of the book, the author’s name, page count, publisher and year.
For example:
Suspect
by Gina Tron
214pp. Whiskey Tit 2024
We are happy to receive submissions of personal essays that reference books, are engaging, humorous, or offer insight into various subcultures. We rarely accept personal essays that recount the travails of personal relationships.
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 (we) 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.”
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.
Know your audience— We do not accept pieces that provide general primers on capitalism and colonialism, tutorials on the politics of oppression, or on the ABCs of anarchism or other sub- and counter-cultures. No piece should include direct address—do not command readers to look something up online, take a specific political action, or declare what they should already know or think about, or the like. Avoid catch phrases like “late capitalism” or redundancies like “settler colonialism.” Colonialism does not exist without settlers and declaring the era of entrenched and pernicious economic system to be “late stage” does not make it so.
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 30 words.
Editorial Process. Yes, we have one! After a submission or pitch is accepted, our editors work collaboratively with all of our writers to shape each piece for accuracy, clarity, grammar, and length. We publish in print, on paper, and have meaningful word count limits.
Send your pitch to slushpile@anarchistreviewofbooks.org
ALL POWER TO THE IMAGINATION
