PopMatters Ongoing Feature Series

Submission details for regular feature submissions are here.

All Things Reconsidered

Contact: Features Editors (Submit Pitches and Essays to PopMatters via Submittable.)

Have you ever wanted to recant your statements from a past review, or revisit old judgments in hindsight? Perhaps you’ve wanted to praise a pariah or take a sacred cow to task? Here’s your chance. With “All Things Reconsidered”, writers are encouraged to look back on past releases and reconsider them anew, with an emphasis on both the historical and the personal. Explain how your opinion of an [artist, album, movie, book, TV show, etc.] has changed over time, and argue for the revised status — positive or negative — from the lens of the present.

Pick Just One

Contact: Features Editors (Submit Pitches and Essays to PopMatters via Submittable.)

This feature works as a kind of challenge to the writer: Pick one song/album, book, or movie that you think defines the overall work of a particular artist. More than just “What’s their best song/movie/book?”, this feature asks writers to take a stand and argue for a defining moment that speaks to entire career, potential controversy and all.

Life Savers

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Most of us have been marked by music in some fundamental way, and many of us can point to an album that helped sustain us through times of turmoil. Perhaps being a fan of a TV show gave you a sense of identity. Maybe an author’s words pulled you through some tough times. Explore your personal saviors in essay form by analyzing how this piece of culture or person kept you going, why they had the impact it did, and how you feel about them today.

In the Details

Contact: Features Editors (Submit Pitches and Essays to PopMatters via Submittable.)

Here the idea is to develop articles that take something small/specific and use it to get at larger issues/ideas/trends. For example, film articles that focus on the particular habits of a particular actor or director, or even a particular scene or type of scene, but then use those to investigate larger questions of the ways films work on us, or what films say about today, etc. Rather than relying on generalizations, these articles ask us to look at details and extrapolate larger ideas from concrete and intimately analyzed points.

Scenic Overlook

Contact: Features Editors (Submit Pitches and Essays to PopMatters via Submittable.)

Sometimes music, art or literature seems like it erupts from a specific place and becomes intimately tied to its geographical origins. Here writers are encouraged to reflect on artists that help shape a local scene in some way. Perhaps the artists never escaped local status to make it onto the larger stage, but plenty of vitality can be found in local acts, whether they speak to the cultural world at large, or just to the local set. This is a chance to validate those artists who enliven their locales.

Note: we are unable to pay you monetarily at this time. But you retain your copyright and are published by this reputable magazine, wherein you are rewarded with a platform to broaden your readership, currently 1.3 million unique monthly readers, who enjoy reading long-form essays.