Wite For Us
Thank you for your interest in writing for Black Women Voices. (BWV) All articles should reflect the Vision and the Mission of Black Women Voices (BWV)
Black Women Voices is a Digital Lifestyle Blog!
Black Women Voices (BWV)
OUR VISION
Shaping Future Leaders and Improving Women’s Lives to Help Create a Better World
Black women voices (BWV) endeavors to prepare thoughtful, mature, service-oriented leaders who will positively transform society with global leadership. Through our activity-focused programs, participants learn tangible leadership skills: the ability to think critically, work collaboratively, influence others, manage conflict, and communicate effectively.
But we don’t stop there. In this era, negative images of women—fueled by stereotypes and discouraging statistics are constantly portrayed in the media, shaping mainstream attitudes and actions. The counter to this effect, Black women Voices (BWV) arms women with tools to open an empowering dialogue and to take a refreshing look at the 21st Century bonds of sisterhood.
We guide women to self-transformation by helping them to redefine themselves and focus on emotional wellness, intimacy, spirituality, balance, and overall well-being—things that are often overlooked in busy, and frequently complicated, lives.
We are committed to:
- Redefining and rebuilding sisterhood relationships
- Advancing educational opportunities for women and girls
- Assisting with leadership development
- Organizing advocacy
- Creating healthy dialogue that will inform, educate and inspire
.All correspondence should be sent by way of email griffintunya@yahoo.com if you plan to query us with a story proposal, please include two samples of your journalistic writing. For articles submitted on spec, manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, and no more than 1,000 words in length. E-mail queries must be fully developed and must include two samples of your journalistic writing. It usually takes four to six weeks for us to respond to your query or manuscript. We do not accept queries made over the phone.
Preferred Formatting
12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins. At the top of the first page, include the following:
- article title
- author’s name
- address and daytime phone number
- e-mail address and/or fax number
- date
- approximate word count
Current-events articles and articles with appropriate photos or artwork get top priority in our processing procedure.
Photography SubmissionsHOTOGRAPHY SUBMISSIONS
Black Women Voices (BWV) believes that each story is enhanced by photos of its subjects and characters, which help draw in the readers. Articles submitted with appropriate pictures (or for which pictures are available) receive the highest priority. We will be happy to accept photos for articles as either digital files or hard-copy originals and have prepared these guidelines to help you provide us with images of the best quality.
Digital Images
- Images can be sent via email (one or two at a time) – email griffintunya@yahoo.com
- Digital photos need to be uncompressed, high-resolution PNG files, JPEG files (.jpg) or TIFF (.tiff) files.
- The minimum file size that will be accepted is 600 x 900 pixels (two inches by three inches, at a resolution of 300 dpi [dots per inch]). We prefer images of 2240 x 1680 pixels or higher.
- Please note that images that look great on a web page won’t always work in print. For example, a 360 x 504-pixel image that appears to be 5 x 7 inches at the web resolution of 72 dpi will shrink to 1 x 1.5 inches at the print resolution of 300 dpi.
Resources / Sources
- Specific club affiliation
- Although we expect you to do your own fact-checking and get approvals from your quoted sources, we like to have contact info just in case major changes occur and we need a new quote, clarification on a certain point, to get a second round of approval, etc. If they don’t have an email, note that and provide a fax number instead.
- Please supply (at the bottom of your finished article) a list of all your significant references (quoted individuals as well as referenced books, Web sites, etc.), along with contact info and/or bibliographic info as appropriate. The more specific you can be the better. For example, when citing a study, provide as a backup the exact URL where you found it.
- If you quote a book or magazine, we need the complete title, author, publisher, and year and page number info (although we won’t print all that as part of the reference, it’s good to have). If you quote a person, we need name, title, organization or company, phone, email, address, etc. The more thorough and meticulous you can be about all this, the better. It seems like a minor detail, but it takes ages to track down if we have to do it later.
Deadlines
We take them seriously. We are working on very tight editorial turnarounds, and if you are late getting us your copy, our job very quickly becomes a real problem. The deadline for submissions is between the 15th and 20th of every month. We will respond in 72-hours regarding if your submission has been accepted.
Changes
Depending on how things look, we may do one or two rounds of changes with you (meaning we may ask you to make changes or fill in holes and resubmit) and/or we may do additional copy changes on this end. If we’ve asked you to make substantive changes and don’t see them adequately handled in your rewrite (and particularly if we don’t have time to send the piece back to you again) we may “have at.” Whenever possible, we strive to retain your original structure, content, and tone. We do, however, reserve the right to make sweeping changes if we see them as necessary. And sometimes we do. Please don’t make changes personally. We frequently add and delete whole sidebars, chunks, subheads, blurbs, captions, etc. We may rework quotes and edit as needed.
Review
You will generally have an opportunity to review an article at least once (and occasionally twice) before it goes to print. During this review, we ask that you do your final round of fact-checking, confirm quotes (particularly tweaked quotes), triple-check name and company spellings, book titles, Web addresses, etc. We also want to make sure you are happy with the piece overall. If you aren’t, please let us know so we can work it out.
Bylines and Bios
All feature articles get bylined. Some (but not all) departments get bylined, too. It just depends on the room, content, etc. If you feel strongly about being bylined (or not being bylined) for a particular piece, particularly one that has been heavily edited, please let us know.
EMAIL: griffintunya@yahoo.com