My Turn: Reader Submissions Guide

My Turn: Reader Submissions Guide

My Turn is Newsweek's home for personal experience essays—and we want your compelling stories. If you'd like your personal story to be considered for My Turn, please read these submission guidelines on what we're looking for.

In Short:

We want colorful and compelling essays of 600 to 2,500 words that speak directly to the author's personal experience or unique story. Ideally, the story relates to a major news theme or social media trend. Cite your sources on factual claims like data. Provide a short bio of yourself and a couple of images you own the copyright to that we can publish with the essay. Send pitches or draft essays to myturn@newsweek.com.

In Full:

What We're Interested In

We're most interested in subjects dominating the U.S. news agenda or social media trends. If you can hook your essay to a major news theme, or a prominent trend on social media, there's a stronger chance we'll pick your essay up.

However, if you have a unique and interesting story to tell about your life and experiences, but it doesn't necessarily relate to a particular news story or social trend, we still want to hear from you. A great story is a great story, after all.

You don't have to send us a draft essay in the first instance, though you can if you have one prepared. You can just send an email to myturn@newsweek.com briefly outlining your story for us to review. Then, if we'd like to see a full essay, we'll let you know.

How to Write Your Essay

Your personal experience must sit at the heart of the essay. Its focus should be your genuine, direct experience. Tell your story as colorfully as you can. Describe your thoughts and feelings about your anecdotes, events, or incidents.

My Turn essays are not opinion pieces. However, you are welcome to give your views and opinions as they relate directly to your experiences. If you do want to make an argument within a My Turn essay, a good way to think of it is you are sharing the personal experiences that shaped your opinion on the subject.

Cite your sources. If you make a factual claim, such as a statistic, state clearly in the copy the source of the data. For the benefit of the editor, please also link to the source where possible.

The ideal word count is a broad range: Anything from 600 to 2,500 words is fine. But stories should be told at their natural length. Avoid unnecessary detail or background context, tangents, and repetition. Equally, don't leave important information or context out just for the sake of brevity.

Don't worry about writing a headline. We'll handle that on our end when the time comes to publish. We'll try to write something compelling to draw readers in and get them to engage with your essay. It may or may not be something you had in mind. But it will come from the essay and is designed to maximize the audience.

What Else We Need

Please provide a brief bio of yourself that we can append to the end of your piece. One or two sentences are fine. These should be factual—name, career, location, that kind of thing.

Please also provide any images you own to illustrate your essay and that we have your permission to publish. These may be of you or other individuals involved. You must own the copyright to the images you provide. They should be good quality and in focus. The higher the file size, the better: Think megabytes (MB) rather than kilobytes (KB).

Please note: There is no fee for published My Turns.

Alternatively: Interview-Based My Turns

If you prefer, you can tell your story to us in an interview and we'll turn the transcript into an "as told to" personal essay. Let us know in your email if an interview is your preference over writing the essay yourself.

For examples of "as told to" My Turns, please see a small selection below:

Hamas Abducted My Wife and Babies. They're Running Out of Time

I Was Drinking a Liter of Whiskey a Day

I Was Putin's Adviser. I Accused Him of Crimes to His Face

I Grew up in Warren Jeffs' Polygamist FLDS Church

I Almost Lost My Life, but I Chose to Cut Off My Nose Instead

I Gave Birth To Twins, 8 Weeks Later We Made a Heartbreaking Discovery

We Turned a Home Depot Shed Into a Tiny House and Sold it for $275,000

Thanks for reading My Turn and we can't wait to hear your story.