Call for Pitches: Geez 47, Travel

by Aiden Enns | Published 5th May 2017 in Ways of Seeing

Tourist photographers Credit: Henry Bloomfield (link below)

Deadline for pitches: May 17, 2017

A dream

Travel is the dream, the good thing, a satisfying goal for so many people who seek relief from their workaday worlds and yearn to “get away” or behold some place new and spectacular.

Travel is also the way we encounter other cultures, or escape from our own. It can be legitimately mind-expanding and life-giving.

But the travel industry is wrecking the earth, shrinking the world, and exporting a North American, hyper-mobile way of life and interaction. Fuel consumption, income discrepancies, and surplus leisure time can become guilt-inducing factors for many eco-conscious, justice-minded, globe-trotters.

‘Normal’

Still most of us travel, or at least that’s the largely uncontested assumption. We’ve inherited a world where it’s “normal” to fly away for winter or visit family and friends on the other side of this continent or “across the pond.”

How can those of us with privilege handle our incursions into exotic worlds of poverty and low-paid labour? How do you deal with the dilemmas and what is your rationale? Do you volunteer overseas, deliver needed supplies, hang out in pockets of resistance, travel local, go slow?

Sober warnings

Missionaries do it. Best-selling authors do it. It’s a bourgeois obsession but also an organizational need. Does Naomi Klein need to travel the globe to save the planet? Or does Wendell Berry do it better by spending most of 50 years closer to home in Kentucky? Ever wonder why Jesus wandered? Would he want us to wander now?

With this next issue, let’s give Geez readers some stories with helpful guidance, sober warnings, and tales of caution and delight.

Notes about submissions
We want long-form journalism, personal stories of transformation, short bursts of feelings, nuggets of insight, and inspiration. Pick your aspect of the topic and expand with personal experience, researched wisdom, or spiritual insight.

In a great pitch, you describe the story, explain how it’s a perfect fit for Geez, list the sources you’ll consult, and state why you’re the best person to write it (see contact info and deadline below).

 1. Longer non-fiction pieces, length: 650 or 1300 words:  
We’re looking for creative non-fiction essays, investigative articles or research-based pieces on the topic above. While a reference to your personal experience is welcome, readers need wisdom from other sources as well (interviews, books, articles, theologians, social-justice activists, academics, and moms and dads). Pitches should be one page, touch on the wider context of your topic and name at least one other source you will be consulting. Here’s a request: Please think of yourself as a Geez contributing editor. Ask yourself, What would readers who are social-justice oriented and at the fringes of faith want to read on this topic? If your pitch is accepted you’ll usually have three to four weeks to complete the piece.

2. Flash non-fiction, length: 50-350 words: 
These are short, personal experiences or insights. Your piece should capture a moment that illuminates a larger issue or convey a feeling familiar to us all. This is a chance to bring hope, insight, emotion, and connection to readers. Think of it as a snapshot with words.

3. Photos/illustrations:  
Consider the topic above and send original photographs (i.e. you took the photo) or illustrations that provoke or pacify, animate or incite. Or, if you know of a photographer or illustrator who can deliver an awesome photo essay or series of drawings and is willing to get big play in a premium little magazine for a modest honorarium, please pass this pitch along.

Tips for pitches:  
The Geez project is a discussion among people of faith seeking social justice. Our readers and writers express this through art, activism (a creative critique of those in power and the structures that keep them there, the promotion of alternative practices that subvert such powers), contemplation and a “more-grounded, interconnected” approach to living.

Additional info  
Before pitching, please read our guidelines for writers.  Ideally we would like to respond personally to every piece of correspondence we receive. But given the number of submissions we receive – and having tried to respond to all – we realize it is just not possible. If you do not hear back from us within six weeks assume that we were unable to use your submission.

Deadline for pitches: May 17, 2017

Send pitches, manuscripts and images to
  Geez editor, Aiden Enns 
email: stories [at] geezmagazine [dot] org
 mail:  Geez magazine  400 Edmonton Street Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2M2  Canada