WorldTeach

Download the 20th Anniversary Edition of The Dispatch, our alumni newsletter!

To celebrate the 20^th Anniversary of WorldTeach, we’ve put together some of our favorite pictures to make a set of WorldTeach Notecards. Thanks to all of you who have sent us pictures; we had hundreds to choose from. Of course, you can’t buy these cards. But anyone who makes a donation of $50 or more to the WorldTeach general fund will receive a set of cards to show our appreciation.

The Dispatch Archives:
Summer 2006
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Summer 2002

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Quick Glance Guide to Getting Published (in other sources)

The first magazines listed are great publications for general WT topics by writers without much publishing experience.

Most of the websites carefully outline what the magazine is and is not looking for. Make sure your piece fits within these parameters. Familiarize yourself with the magazine’s content before you submit.

3. Not sure if your piece will find a home in one of the magazines listed below? There are thousands of magazines interested in fresh perspectives on personal travel, work, volunteering, and teaching abroad. Contact WorldTeach and we’ll help you find the right one. Also consider your alumnae magazine or your town paper.

4. Learn from other WorldTeach alumni. Start by reading Returned Ecuador Volunteer Christopher Canniff's thoughts on publication inspiration.

5. Keep in touch.

Have you created a successful submission? Can you share tips with volunteers who want to publish? Know of other magazines add to our list?

An ideal forum for WT pieces from the field. Abroad View is published twice a year and contains first person articles, journalistic features, research, commentaries, creative writing, poetry, culture reviews and recommendations, e-mail excerpts, selected blogs, photos, and artwork.

Send articles year round, but the cut-off dates for the biannual print editions are April 25 for the fall edition and November 1 for the spring edition.

They pay an honorarium ($25 for articles, see site for photo $) and run contests for essays. Your audience here are college students who are about to or have studied abroad. Many of them might have interest in a program like WorldTeach after their experiences, so they want to hear what you have to tell them.

Escape Artist

Escape Artist publishes four magazines including Escape from America Magazine, Escape Artist Travel, Carribean Property & Lifestyles Magazine, and Offshore Real Estate Quarterly. The first two publications address issues pertaining to life and travel abroad. The editors are particularly interested in articles pertaining to the experience of transitioning and adapting to new cultures. They do not pay for articles, but they seek pieces of all lengths and topics.

An ideal place for WT Volunteers to submit! They publish widely on their website so your chances are pretty good. You do not have to be a “writer.” The Glimpse Quarterly editorial staff will work with you to “teach you the basic tenants of creative non-fiction.” Plus they'll take anything: essays, stories,
poems, photos, and they have an "in the classroom" section.

No pay but excellent experience for beginning writers. They also promote articles to other places. One returned volunteer had a story here reprinted by the Providence Journal.

Glimpse Quarterly is primarily interested in the experiences of those volunteering, working, and/or studying in a single place for an extended period of time of one month or more.

This is a web page that archives past volumes. They pay an honorarium ($25 for articles with photos) on publication.

Guava Magazine

National Geographic Traveler has just run its first Campus Magazine for Study Abroad. If you think it is belittling to write for college students, just remember that if National Geographic publishes your writing, you are made.

South American Explorer

A great option for our Guyana, Ecuador, Chile volunteers! Like most of the magazines listed here, SA Explorer loves photographs accompanying “articles by knowledgeable authors about their specialty.” They also state that “even the most wretched and awful submissions are greeted with cries of joy and read in the most favorable light" if received according to their submission guidelines. What do you have to lose?!

Students on our summer programs would do particularly well to submit to this magazine, looking for photos and quality writing about all aspects of travel for students.

By the same editors of Abroad View (listed above), Transitions Abroad is a national magazine. It focuses on practical information gained from first-hand experience, for readers who travel for something more than the sights. Current and accurate information is essential. This magazine is primarily a place for travelers to share information through full-length articles or brief summaries (800-1500 words) on a topic related to work, study, travel, or living abroad.

Be sure to check out the editorial schedule; Transitions Abroad publishes six times a year, with a special focus to each issue.

The British publication Wanderlust aims to cover all aspects of special-interest travel and local culture. Off-the-beaten-track destinations, secret corners of the world, and unusual angles on well-known places are always given particular consideration.

“Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping, I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something. This enables me to store up enough strength to endure until the next interruption.”
- Isaac Asimov

“[After talking with many would-be writers], I have concluded that most do not want to be writers…they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a successful manuscript…They aspire to the rewards of writing, but not to the travail."
- James A. Michener

Like Isaac Asimov, I always look forward to writing something. But I am also like most of Michener’s would-be writers: I aspire to the rewards of writing without the travail, quickly producing a successful work before moving on the next one, having completed the thing in its entirety instead of being in the process of completing it.
This article is a recounting of events which led to my reward of a fictional short story entitled “Solitude” which has been published in an anthology entitled: “Tales from the Dark: Stories of the Supernatural,” Tightrope Books, October 2006.

This is my first short fiction publication. While it seems like a small accomplishment, it may be more. I made my only fiction short story submission to a literary magazine, Storyteller in Ottawa. The submission was subsequently rejected. One of the Writers-in-Residence I worked with (from Wayne State University, who started Marick Press) said the rejection letter was encouraging because, although it stated that my piece wasn't suitable for their particular publication, I shouldn’t let this dissuade me from making further submissions to them. A note about rejection letters: I never knew the importance of reading their content, and this is something I learned from working with Marick Press. If a publisher takes the time to write and sign a rejection letter, it is a very good thing. In one rejection letter, a Canadian publisher suggested that something I sent them be submitted to a professional editor, and they outlined possible resources for me to further polish my work. While I took this as a form letter—something they might send to any and all of those who made submissions—I was informed that the letter indicated they were actually interested in the work, but that it needed some more polishing.

I received a call for submissions from Tightrope Books for an anthology some time later. I made a submission and heard nothing after that. I had volunteered my time for Tightrope Books, attending press launches, book launches, an independent book fair, readings, etc. I also volunteered my time with Marick Press, their (then) sister press in Detroit, Michigan. I attempted to obtain collaboration with another publisher in Windsor, talking with an editor there who said that not only was he interested in the collaboration, but that he was also interested in seeing some of my work. This volunteering therefore gave me the opportunity to interface with other publishers and writers, and allowed me many potential avenues for publication.

About a year later, I received another call for submissions from Tightrope Books. I submitted the same story I had submitted to Storyteller magazine. It was subsequently accepted for inclusion in an anthology which featured 28 Canadian writers, one of whom was a creative writing teacher, others being professional writers, novel writers, etc. While this all might seem rather anti-climatic (no large reward except for five author’s copies, all of which were given away to family and friends, no additional offers to publish any additional short stories to date) it isn’t. I have my name in print. I have a starting point: a published fictional short story. It gave me the encouragement I needed to send out four additional short stories to literary magazines. It also gave me the motivation to apply to the Humber School for Writers, one of Canada’s top writing schools, where I have been accepted and have started the program with David Adams Richards as my writing mentor. They have a Literary Agency attached to the school. Perhaps nothing will come from this. Perhaps I am fooling myself. Perhaps I am no writer at all. But without this one short story publication, I might never have known.

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