At sunburstwomen.com, we welcome your participation in keeping our website filled with vibrant, interesting articles.

These submission guidelines are meant to help you in preparing your essays, articles, features, artwork, or other content, and to let you know how we decide where your submissions will appear on the site. You can download a PDF version of these guidelines here.

First and foremost, this site is written for, by, and about women, so you don’t have to be a professional writer to submit your work to sunburstwomen.com.

That said, we do need your submission to be your own original work and to be reasonably well organized. We don’t want to rewrite your work!

Please do not submit work that is not your own creation. By submitting an essay, article, feature, or artwork to sunburstwomen.com, you are verifying that the writing or artwork you provide to us is your own, and free of anyone else’s copyright, and that we have the right to use and adapt it as we see fit. Please see our Terms of Use for further details. By submitting work to sunburstwomen.com, you agree to the terms set forth in those terms.

sunburstwomen.com reserves the right to determine, at our sole discretion, whether any submission is deemed appropriate for inclusion.

We will not accept anything that we deem pornographic, profane, violent, hate-filled, or inappropriate for young women in their teens. This is a family-friendly site, and while we may address issues that are serious, we do that with the understanding that we encourage viewers as young as 13 to visit our website. We ask that you keep that in mind, too, when making your submissions.

How-to articles are always popular, but we will not accept articles that teach readers how to commit crimes of any sort.

We will consider:

Essays. Short, blog-style pieces, usually 200 – 450 words, on topics that are of interest to you. Share a personal experience, observation, or opinion. Essays often appear in Our Stories, Our Words, on our main navigation bar.

City Articles. These are a little longer, usually 500 – 750 words, on topics of interest to others in a local community. Is there a business that is known for its community service? A neighbor who makes a difference in people’s lives? A building or park with an interesting history? An event that draws a crowd? Your (city) Stories is the place to let the world know what’s special in your community. Before you spend time on an article, please drop us a note to see if it’s something we feel will rest comfortably on our site and with our visitors. Articles can be written as factual reports, or feature pieces.

Features. These usually run 800 – 1,650 words, and are intended for an even wider audience. These are the stories on our sunburstwomen.com landing page, and on the landing pages of the “Our Cities” sections. Features can talk about issues important to women no matter where we live. They can profile people in our communities, or explain something in greater detail than is possible in a shorter article. Because of their prominence on our site, features are only accepted for consideration after we’ve communicated with a writer and determined that the topic is appropriate for our website.

To make it easy for us to use your submission or respond to your query, please follow these “rules of the road.”

When you write to suggest an article or feature for inclusion, your query should include:

• Your contact information, including your real name, e-mail address, mailing address and phone number. If you’re using a pen name, let us know that, too.
• A brief overview of the article or feature you’d like to submit.
• Why you want to write it. What is it that drew you to this topic? Why would other women be interested? What makes you the right writer for it?

Submit your correspondence or queries here.

Writing for sunburstwomen.com is a great way for beginning writers to build a portfolio of published work, or for established writers to find a wider audience or a new niche. Most of our content is written by and for the women who visit our site, but in cases where we make a formal assignment, we also pay for your work.

When you’re finished writing your submission, you’ll e-mail your text fle to us. Each text file should include:

• Your e-mail address so we can reach you.
• Your bio. Please keep it brief (two or three sentences). If you have a website, you can include your URL here. If you want readers to be able to reach you directly, please include your e-mail address.
• Links that you suggest be embedded in the text. Please bold the text that should be tagged (no longer than three words), and list the links, in the order they appear in your text. Links that promote the sale of a product or service are not allowed. Links to the website of a business featured or mentioned in the submission are fine, but we do not accept submissions that are blatantly commercial. We reserve the right not to use any provided links.
• Title. Suggested title, capitalizing the first letter of each major word. (Ex.: My First Day at School)
• Your byline, as you’d like it to appear. (Ex.: Jane Everygal Public; J.E. Public; Jane Public; J. Everygal Public; Jane E. Public; if you’re using a pen name, we still need to see your real name, followed by the byline you want to use.)
• The text, single-spaced, with double-spacing between paragraphs. Please do not include html code in your text.

Change is inevitable, and as our site evolves, so will these submission guidelines. Please check back before making a submission or sending a query to see if something substantive has changed since your last visit.

Thank you for your interest in contributing to the success of sunburstwomen.com!