Pitches wanted (arts, culture) | $100+ per piece

COMPANY/PUBLICATION: BROAD SOUND

Deadline: 19 July 2024

Ethan Warren, Editor in Chief of Broad Sound, is looking for pitches:

Calling all Mountain Goats fans!

On April 26, 2025 John Darnielle’s landmark musical memoir The Sunset Tree turns 20, and to mark the occasion Broad Sound (a journal of arts and culture) is launching the first Broad Sound Spotlight: a volume devoted to a single work of art.

The goal is to publish a volume (both digital and physical) comprising 13 pieces of new original writing, one for each track on The Sunset Tree. Ideally these pieces should vary greatly in style and tone—we’d love to see personal reflection and deep musicological analysis, but also poetry, short fiction, and work taking even more unusual forms. When John Darnielle wrote his 33 ⅓, he wrote a novella. Why should we hope for anything different?

Please submit pitches (yes, even poems and stories can be pitched) to broadsoundmag@gmail.com on or before July 19, 2024. You are strongly encouraged to pitch for more than one track–we’ll be looking for not just the best pitch on each song, but a balance of style, so the more songs you can make a case for, the better your odds of making the roster! Alongside your pitch(es), please include a brief bio and a few links or attachments sharing some of your previous work.

Pay will be $100 USD per piece, remitted upon completion of the editorial process.

Speaking of which…

Broad Sound is a two-person operation: each essay is edited multiple times by editor-in-chief Ethan Warren and copy editor/fact checker Sydney Urbanek. This means a few things: for one, your piece will get a lot of care and attention. For another, you should be prepared to continue working actively on these pieces for a few weeks after submitting the draft. And last but not least, the process can be protracted, so contributors who get their work in early and finish the editorial process early do have to wait a while for publication. In exchange, we like to be flexible with deadlines and respect that developing a wonderful piece of work often requires patience. There’s a reason we’ll begin this project about nine months before publication. It will be worth the wait.

We are going to make it through this year if it kills us. And on the other side, let’s publish an extraordinary volume of writing on an extraordinary work of art.

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CONTACT INFORMATION (please do not share the email address publicly):

• Questions/submissions: broadsoundmag@gmail.com

• Website: https://www.broadsoundmag.com/

TO HELP YOU CRAFT YOUR PITCH:

• Learn more about the publication: Broad Sound is an annual journal comprising essays, interviews, and creative writing on topics ranging from film to music to fine art to books and beyond. It features styles ranging from the academic to the personal to the experimental.

• Check out our collection of pitch excerpts on this page and find more sample pitches at The Open Notebook and at SuccessfulPitches.com.

• Do not forget to end your pitch with (1) a short introduction about yourself; (2) a few lines highlighting your writing experience, relevant credentials and publication credits; and (3) links to your strongest work or portfolio, and online profile.

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