About Us
Café is an online magazine for young adult women who identify as Lutheran or not.
Café is a free, monthly, and on-line magazine for young adult women. It explores topics that are relevant to women and how faith relates to these issues.
Readers and writers of Café include pastors, seminary and college students, and other young adult women who use Café as a Bible study resource individually or with a group. Many also use it to learn more about what the Lutheran church has to say about certain issues and to start discussions with friends or classmates. Although many women in their 20s and 30s contribute in every issue, Café can be used and shared by women of all ages.
Café, the monthly publication and podcast, are made possible through regular offerings donated by women from over 7,000 active Women of the ELCA units in congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). To continue this ministry to lay and clergy women, your donation is greatly appreciated. Donate now.
We won!
The Café publication and podcast have won numerous awards from the Religion Communicators Council (RCC) and the Associated Church Press (ACP) since 2004.
Most recently, Café was awarded “Best in Class, Award of Merit” at the ACP conference in April 2012.
The RCC awarded the Café podcast an Award of Excellence at their conference in 2011.
So, do you want to write for Café?
Our audience
The target audience are Lutheran women between the ages of 18 to 35+. Readers vary in age. Our readership is a diverse group with a variety of lifestyles and interests.
Submitting your work
Queries with a sample of your work are preferred. Queries may be submitted via e-mail to cafe@elca.org. Please indicate if the you are submitting work is being considered for publication elsewhere.
Queries about time-sensitive topics should be submitted at least seven months in advance (for example, a query about a Christmas article should be submitted in May.)
Café receives many queries and unsolicited manuscripts; because of this volume, we cannot acknowledge them when they are received. We will contact you if we are interested in your work.
Please know that we ask particular established authors to write on specific themes far in advance of publication. We publish very few articles that originated as unsolicited manuscripts or queries. Those we do accept meet these requirements:
Requirements
Queries most likely to be accepted are from Christian women. (Though we accept queries from men.) include stories about women or reflections that especially speak to young adult women.
Developing your article
Once we have contacted you about your query and asked you to develop your article, please follow these guidelines.
Inclusive language is important. For example, the pronoun he should not be used to refer to both males and females. Generally, avoid using pronouns (he, she, his, her) when referring to God, and words for God that are exclusively masculine should be used only rarely (for example, use ruler, not king).
Carefully research your article, checking the accuracy of facts, quotations, names, addresses, and Web site addresses. Please cite all references and add appropriate web links. When quoting Scripture, indicate which translation you are using. Café prefers the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
We must have full publication information (author, title, page number of quoted text; place of publication, publisher, and date of publication) for any books, articles, or hymn texts cited. We discourage the use of footnotes; please use in-text citations.
Rights
Café usually purchases one-time, first rights; we prefer to print original articles that have not been published elsewhere. Copyright remains with author.
Second rights (when the work has been previously published) are purchased only rarely. If you are offering second rights, please give the name and date of the publication in which the work first appeared.
Please send freelance submissions electronically to: cafe@elca.org.
