Write For Us

Thank you for your interest in contributing to our blog! Please read on to learn more about our approach and how to pitch or submit articles to us.

Our Approach to Writing

As an extension of The Witness Black Christian Collective, our blog is a place for Black writers and thinkers to express their ideas and share their experiences. We want to hear about your joys and sorrows. We want to hear about the things that make you angry or give you life. It is all welcome here. Our only request is that you write from a decidedly Black perspective and aim to center the concerns of Black Christians. We prefer that you speak to a Black audience, but if you must speak to white people, please try to center Blackness. 

We believe that Christianity is embodied as much as it is confessed. As such, we neither require nor expect every submission to discuss theology, scripture, or the Christian faith. Instead, we hope that your faith-based perspective will flow naturally from you and be implicit in your work, if not always explicit. 

To write for us, you do not need to be a pastor, theologian, or church leader. You do not need to have degrees. All you need is to be a Black person with an opinion about something happening in the world. 

How to Submit

Thank you again for your interest in writing for The Witness. There are two ways that you can submit articles to us: 1) By making a pitch or 2) by submitting a finished article. We strongly recommend that you submit a pitch to us before you write an entire article and send it to us.

To submit a pitch

Email your pitch to submit@thewitnessbcc.com with the following information:

  1. Make the email’s subject line the proposed title of your work
  2. In the body of your email, include the title in bold type
  3. Write a 50-250 word summary of what you hope to discuss in your article.

An editor will review your pitch and communicate whether we will accept or pass on your pitch. Occasionally, we might ask a writer to refine their pitch  or to submit a pitch on another topic.

To submit a full article for consideration

Please note that we strongly recommend that writers send us pitches rather than an entire article for consideration. If you decide to send us an entire article, please email it to submit@thewitnessbcc.com with the following information:

  1. Make the email’s subject line the proposed title of your work
  2. In the body of your email, include the title in bold type followed by a summary of your article’s contents.
  3. Attach your article in a Word (.docx) or Google document.

An editor will review your article and communicate whether we will accept or pass on your work. Occasionally, we might ask for expansion or clarification.

The Process

If we pass on your pitch/work…

If we pass on your pitch or article, please keep writing! Please keep submitting ideas to us! In most cases, we will do everything we can to work with a writer to help them develop a pitch into something that we can run. If we happen to pass on your submission, we will briefly state why.

If we accept your pitch/work…

If we accept your article, we will edit it and prepare it for publication. After your article is accepted, please submit a brief bio and headshot to us. You will not need to do anything else.

If we accept your pitch, we will assign a deadline for you to submit the completed article (and we are flexible with deadlines unless you’re writing about current events). When you submit your finished article, we will edit it and prepare it for publication. Please submit a brief bio and headshot with your completed article. Your article should be submitted in a Word (.docx) or Google document.