This issue is about the fire in your belly. You know that fire. It’s the deep-rooted, forceful feeling that wrenches your guts and reminds you that you’re alive. It keeps you up at night, consumes you and drives you into the world to enact its will. Love, longing, rage, desire, jealousy, grief, lust, fear, shame.

Tell us about the choices you’ve made and actions you’ve taken from this place, what was created and destroyed in their wake. Show us how your gut feelings reveal who you are and what you care about most. Yes, we appreciate all the feelings, but we’re looking specifically for stories and investigations on the very concrete and real-life results of following your deepest feelings.

These pieces could be personal essays, interviews, a humor piece, a photo essay, a series of instagram shots, a comic, or hard-hitting, investigative journalism. Some things you might dive into:

• the transformative power of feelings into social/political movements
• the stories that began as a small itch and exploded into something bigger
• desire/sexual exploration and the discovery of new kinks
• quitting your old life in order to start a completely new one
• the lengths people have taken to prove their intuition is correct
• how a body tells you what you want and need, how it learns that, whether it betrays your ideals
• what happens when you run up against something that remains unaffected by your strongest feelings

Examples of pieces that we like:
The Mexplainer: A History of Anti-Brown Violence in the American Southwest by Myriam Gurba for Autostraddle

Salsa y La Naturaleza: How a Willie Colón Song Taught Me About Queerness and Love by Gabby Rivera for Autostraddle

A Brief History of Lesbian Sex on TV: From Late Night Hair-Brushing to Primetime Scissoring by the TV Team for Autostraddle

The Pleasure of Clapping Back by Roxanne Gay for Gay Mag

Work Sucks by Kassandra Vee for The New Inquiry

I Walked From Selma To Montgomery, by Rahawa Haile for Buzzfeed

CRYING IN H MART By Michelle Zauner in The New Yorker

Toward an Applicable Theory of Just Not by Rachel Kincaid for Autostraddle

The Optics of Opportunity by Hafizah Geter for Gay Mag

Summer of Rage by Rebecca Traister for The Cut

Grown-Woman Theology: Lessons of race, blackness and power from a self-described nerdy Black girl by Dr. Brittney Cooper for Longreads

Payment:

We are an independent publication currently hanging on for dear life! So our rates aren’t the best out there, but relative to our budget they’re quite good. Depending on the piece (length, edits required, reporting involved if relevant), payment is between $50 – $300.

We are, as always, especially interested in submissions from trans women and people of color. We also accept multiple submissions from the same author.

The deadline for submissions is March 1, but we will be accepting things on a rolling basis, and will respond to you either way by March 8. Please submit in the form below.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!