Spotlight Guidelines

A spotlight is a feature—either interview or essay—that calls attention to an author, musician, publisher, artist, movement, literary theme, or a ‘zine or website we feel would be of interest to our readers. We include up to 4 spotlights per issue, but try to make sure that they do not compete with one another. For example, we would be pleased to publish two spotlight essays on the same movement if they contained differing viewpoints or perspectives, but not two that contained essentially the same point of view. We do not spotlight two authors, two artists, musicians, or publishers at the same time.

If you’re an author, artist, musician, publisher, ‘zine editor, or manage a website that would be of interest to our readers, please let us know you’d like to be featured. Along with the featured interview or essay about you and your work (your preference), we would also like to include a piece of your art, music, content appropriate to your website that our readers could enjoy, or a short story or poem (reprint or original), although that is not a requirement to be featured. It would be a bonus that would fill us with glee if the piece you provide fits with the theme of the issue.

We can, with enough lead time, schedule reviews along with the spotlight if your work is or soon will be available at the time the spotlight is scheduled to appear.

If you’re interested in writing a spotlight essay on a literary theme, a cultural movement, or about a website of interest to you, please let us know what you’re interested in writing, the estimated word count (preference is for no more than 5k words, but we’ll be flexible if the subject or your point of view is unique or intriguing), and provide either the work in question or a sample of your non-fiction writing if the piece has not yet been written. If we accept the piece, we will include a short bio, a link to your website, and a link to your preferred website where your work can be purchased, if available.

Please feel free to broaden these guidelines to your benefit. For example, we featured pictures of pieces of steampunk jewelry and linked to websites where it could be purchased along with the music, fiction, art, and poetry in our steampunk issue. A spotlight on a steampunk jewelry designer would have fit very well with our theme and mission.

Payment for spotlight articles is our standard rate of 1/2 cent per word, minimum of $5.00, maximum of $25.00.

Contact us for more information at submissions AT membradisjecta DOT com.