Writers' Guidelines
Lutheran Woman
Today
About
LWT
Lutheran Woman
Today (circulation:110,000) is a magazine for all women in the
church (see Women of the ELCA "About Us").
Published 10 times a year, LWT is developed by Women of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (Chicago, Illinois). The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)
includes more than 10,000 congregations with 5.1 million members.
Our audience
Our audience is primarily Lutheran women — young, older, and
in-between, 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. Women who are members of our full–communion partner
churches (Moravian, Episcopal, Presbyterian Church (USA), Reformed Church in
America, United Church of Christ) also read the magazine.
Submitting your work
Queries with a sample
of your work are preferred. Queries may be submitted via e-mail to
lwt@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.)
LWT 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
- follow the theme of that issue or the Bible study (see below)
- are from Christian women. (Though we accept queries from men.)
- include stories about women or reflections that especially speak to women.
- use inclusive language.
- reflect specifically Lutheran or generally mainline Christian theology.
- have a spiritual basis.
- discuss issues important to women and relate those issues to the Christian
faith.
- offer first rights.
Themes
See Coming Up for issue and
Bible study themes.
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. LWT 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
LWT 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.
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