Kasurian is open to writers and thinkers from every background. Pitches are currently open for Articles, Op-eds and Letters. Letters responding to something we’ve run can be submitted at any time to: editors@kasurian.com.
Articles and Op-Eds require a pitch. Send an overview of no more than one page, stating the type, the theme, narrative/argument and structure of your proposed piece. Include a brief overview of the literature on your topic, pointing to published books, papers, newspapers and blog articles that show the breadth of your engagement. Your pitch must answer the following questions: What should a reader take away from this piece, and why does it matter?
Include a short biography of no more than two sentences telling us about who you are, what you do, and what you are generally interested in. Do not send a complete piece. Kasurian does not publish work written by AI. Kasurian does not publish fiction, poetry or academic pieces.
If your pitch aligns with Kasurian’s mission, our editorial team will respond within two weeks. Expect 2-3 rounds of substantive editing. If a pitch is unsuccessful, we will always offer feedback for improvement.
If a pitch is successful, below is an overview of our writing guidelines:
Do:
- Write for the long term, and for legibility. An essay should still be worth reading in five or ten years’ time, and a reader should come away feeling the world has become more legible, not less.
- Describe before you prescribe. Essays are descriptive and analytical. Give readers ideas they can use as tools to make sense of the world, and frameworks with real explanatory power. Don’t confuse ‘ought’ with is.
- Write with curiosity and conviction. We want the confidence of someone who understands their subject, and the curiosity of someone still eager to learn beyond it, and humble to be proven wrong.
Do not:
- Write in generalisations. Labels like “Secularism” or “Liberalism” carry little analytical weight. Reach instead for the specific cultural, geographic, or political categories that do.
- Lean on academic jargon. We don’t publish academic pieces, philosophy or ethics, or writing thick with jargon. If your essay turns on words like “ontological” or “semiotic,” we won’t run it.
- Offer topics instead of stories. Who, what, where, and why matter as much as how. Ground your theory in case studies.
- Turn polemical. We have no appetite for tribalism; avoid antagonistic language and caricature.
- Bury the lede. Your argument belongs front, centre, and clear.
Crucially, plain, accessible English matters to our readers and to us. The best guide to the difference between bad academic English and good plain English is George Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language.
Observe the difference. Here is a passage in clear and smooth prose:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happens to them all.
And here is the same thought in modern academic English:
Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
We want the former, not the latter!
Orwell’s six rules are worth keeping close:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Finally, the best guide to writing for Kasurian is to read our essays.