Our audience
The target audience is Lutheran women between the ages of 18 to 35+. Our
readers vary in age. They are career women, students, mothers,
volunteers, those active in the Women of the ELCA and those not, single,
married, divorced, widowed, liberal, conservative, and moderate. 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.
We prefer to see your sample as an attachment in MS Word, but in-message
samples will be accepted. Please let us know in your query if this 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.)
Cafe--Stirring your Spirit Within 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 most of what we publish is assigned — 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 our
requirements, as outlined below.
Requirements
Queries most likely to be accepted
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are from Christian women. (Though we accept queries from men.)
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include stories about women or reflections that especially speak
to young women.
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use inclusive language.
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reflect specifically Lutheran or generally mainline Christian
theology.
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can have a spiritual basis.
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discuss issues important to women and relate those issues to the
Christian faith.
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offer first rights.
Themes
See the subscribe page for upcoming
topics.
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.
When quoting Scripture, indicate which translation you are using.
Cafe prefers the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). Do not depend on
memory even when quoting your favorite Bible verse.
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
Cafe 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
