About Grief Book Club + Submission Guidelines
Updated as of 12/2/23
Guidelines update: As of 12/1/23, Grief Book Club will only accept drafts. One of our editors (okay, it’s me) has been accepted into Medium’s Boost Nomination Pilot and drafts are preferred for nomination over published pieces because they allow me to work closely with the writer on a piece.
About Grief Book Club
Grief Book Club (GBC) was an idea I had back in 2018. I created it as a place to review books, movies, TV shows, and podcasts about grief and then promptly did not write many reviews. But I’m keeping the title because I like the idea of a book club filled with people gathered in someone’s living room talking about their grief, connecting, and maybe recommending a good book (or just sipping tea by the wood burning stove, surrounded by people who “get it.”)
Anyway, isn’t life one big grief book club?
No one wants to be a member of this club, but here we are, trying to figure out how to navigate BIG GRIEF in a world that doesn’t seem to have enough space or time for grief. Since most of us haven’t written a book or scripted a TV show about our experience with grief, I’m opening up submissions to my fellow grievers. I want your grief stories. Pile them on. You’ve come to the right publication.
As of August 2023, I’m accepting submissions in the following categories:
Memoir — Essays focused on a pivotal grief experience, something that changed you, or your point of view. This should have a narrative and be its own standalone story (versus a book chapter or serialized excerpt of a larger story). Here’s an example of a grief memoir I wrote about how helping my daughter die taught me some lessons about confronting the reality of dying. Tag: Memoir
Essays — An essay is a bit different than a memoir in that it’s about a moment in time, or outside of time. It can be something happening now, a thing that may not yet be resolved, or an issue or experience you’ve been grappling with. Here’s an example of a poignant essay by Christopher Robin about never quite fitting in. It’s not specifically about grief, but it kind of is. Tag: Essay
Opinion — There is a nebulous category of story that isn’t an essay or a memoir, but also not quite a rant. Like Shannon Ashley’s piece about our need to take male trauma seriously, opinion pieces come from a place of experience, but aren’t necessarily about our own experience. I personally think we need to be louder about how the world supports grieving and traumatized people. Timna Sheffey’s awful experience when she told a doctor she lost her daughter is an example of how the medical profession could be better trained to deal with grieving patients. Tag: Opinion
Poetry — Medium hasn’t historically been kind to poets in terms of earnings or attention, but apparently this is changing and I’d love to support poetry here. Please do submit it. Reading poetry helped me through my first year of grief after losing my daughter. My brain was fragmented and I could only take in so much. Poetry helped me find my way back to life when I was completely adrift. Tag: Poetry
Morbid Humor — Before my daughter died, I had a pretty good sense of humor. But after? Well, it took me a while to find joy in anything. My humor started returning a couple of years ago. Sometimes laughing until you cry is the best medicine for a broken heart, so don’t hold back with humorous takes on sad, upsetting, or otherwise grim stories. My piece on Menopause is an example of what I mean when I say “morbid humor.” Let’s lighten up the heavy a little bit. Tag: Humor
Thoughts on the kind of writing I’m looking for
A good essay, whether memoir or otherwise, transcends the personal to become universal by evoking real emotion. It’s not a how-to article or an explainer, but an authentic story that you can write about with some authority. So, be authentic. Write about grief and loss and how it’s impacted you. Be descriptive.
Don’t shy away from using language and imagery that evokes emotion. Emotion is not a hook. It’s not a hack. I love writing that makes me laugh, cry, or shake my fist at the universe.
I’m open to any and all grief stories — parental grief is my own personal heartache. Tell me yours. Loss of a parent, sibling, friend, pet, marriage…all are welcome here. I also welcome reviews of books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, or any other type of consumable media (e.g., video games, songs, etc.) that you’d like to recommend (or not) based on how they helped you (or not) with your grief.
Some technical points:
- Drop a note in the comments or leave a private note. Give me a day or two to respond since I’m a one-person show over here.
- Keep stories to 4–10 minutes long. I may accept pieces a bit longer or shorter than this, but you’re more likely to be published in GBC if you stick with that length.
- No AI-generated writing. At all.
- Your story must be about grief or loss in some way, shape, or form.
- Please follow Medium’s Quality Guidelines and familiarize yourself with what it means to be Boosted.
- Please use only one header image for your story unless images are relevant to your story (e.g., several photos of a loved one added throughout a piece). Please make sure all images have appropriate attribution and image ALT text. I adore author-created images and photos. Stock images give me hives, but I will grudgingly accept them if I love your piece.
- Please avoid bold text, ALL CAPS, and refrain from writing section headers. Use italics ever-so sparingly. Essays aren’t book reports. I love section breaks to keep pacing, but random text effects give me more hives than stock photos.
- Essays aren’t blog posts. They should stand on their own. If you reference something you’ve already written about, then link the relevant words in your piece to your past story (e.g., when my daughter died, everything changed). Pretend that the reader doesn’t know you even if you’ve been writing on Medium for a decade.
- By submitting to GBC, you agree to some minor editing for typos and mispellings. If more significant editing is required, either I or another editor will leave a note or notes requesting changes.
- Please tag your stories as “Grief” and include the tag relevant to the category: Poetry, Essay, Memoir, Review, Humor. I will add the relevant tags if they’re not already there.
- As of 12/1/23, I will only be accepting drafts versus already published pieces.
- I’m currently only accepting nonfiction pieces or poetry.
- I recognize that publishing your work in my publication is a privilege. You own the rights to your work and you can withdraw it from GBC anytime. If you do choose to withdraw it, I ask that you wait at least 2 weeks after it’s been published, but this is only a request, not a necessity. I may remove you as a writer if you repeatedly remove pieces, not because I’m angry, but because I need to maintain some consistency with stories in the publication.
- If your story is boosted, an editor will swap out one of the tags to “Boosted” so it can be featured in our Boosted Gallery.
What You Can Expect When You Submit
Right now, this publication has one editor (me!) and I work as a full time content writer, so it may take a few days before I’m able to review your piece. I’ll acknowledge receipt of submission within 24–48 hours via a private note at the top of your piece.
Please feel free to nudge me if you don’t hear from me in that time frame by dropping a private note in your piece.
My goal is to publish submissions within 5–7 days or less. Once you’ve been added as a writer, feel free to submit additional stories, but please keep it to no more than one submission per week.
