Submission Guidelines

Pulse seeks high-quality, unpublished stories and poetry by patients, caregivers, doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists, students and anyone else who wants to share his or her experiences of giving or receiving health care. We would love to pay authors handsomely for accepted work; alas, we’re not yet able to. We are grateful for each and every submission and appreciate the effort that authors have put into their works

Upon accepting a piece, Pulse acquires the right to circulate it and publish it on its web site; Pulse also acquires the right to publish it in a print anthology or for promotional purposes. Thirty days after the piece first appears on the Pulse web site, the author retains the right to publish the piece elsewhere. If this occurs, we ask that Pulse be credited as the first publisher

Before submitting a piece to us, please review the following questions:

Are you a Friend of Pulse? If not, please sign up!

Is this an original piece of work, written by you? We only consider original works.

Has a version of the piece been published in print, on the Internet, in electronic journals, e-zines, academic web sites or other public web sites? Sorry, we do not consider submissions that have previously been published elsewhere.

Is the piece currently being considered for publication elsewhere? Please do not send us a work that is being considered by other publications. To make this requirement less burdensome for authors, we do our best to respond to all submissions within six to eight weeks.

Does your story or poem arise from your own experience? We want stories and poems that arise from situations you have experienced personally.

Does your piece describe a patient? Pulse--voices from the heart of medicine is committed to protecting a patient's right to privacy.  Ideally, you will obtain written permission from any patient you write about; as an alternative, you must change his or her name and omit or alter other identifying characteristics. A reader should not be able to pinpoint a neighbor, friend or family member as the subject of your writing.

Once you have reviewed these questions, please cut and paste the following language into the e-mail you send us with your submission:

I certify that I have read and agree to the Submission Guidelines of Pulse—voices from the heart of medicine. I am submitting an original piece of work created entirely by me, whose rights belong to me. No version of this work has been published elsewhere, nor is it currently being submitted elsewhere. This work does not infringe upon the rights of any person, nor does it violate anyone’s privacy.

Also, please include with your submission a telephone number (cell is preferable) where we can reach you in case urgent editorial questions arise.

Stories: Send your story as a Word attachment to: prose@pulsemagazine.org. Stories will be need to be edited to approximately 800 words.

Poems: Due to the large number of poems we have received and our desire to publish material quickly, as of November 1, 2012 we have imposed a moratorium on poetry submissions to Pulse. Over the coming months, we will continue to distribute poems of exceptional quality to our readers. Once we have reduced our backlog--by fall 2013--we will announce via letter to our readers and writers an end to the moratorium. At that time we will once again enthusiastically invite further poetic works. Many thanks to all the wonderful poets who have already made our efforts such a success.

Feel free to query us (dguernsey@pulsemagazine.org) about the status of your work at any time.

Visuals: We will publish a new image on the Pulse home page every other week. Each image will remain on the home page for one week before taking up residence in our Visuals Collection.

We prefer images that arise from--or were somehow impacted by--your own healthcare experiences or those of your patients or loved ones. For the moment, we discourage submissions of photographs or artworks that portray recognizable faces--until we have established appropriate protocols for protecting privacy in such cases.

We ask that you limit your submissions to one image every six months, i.e., one image between January and June, and one image between July and December.

Please send your image in jpg format as an e-mail attachment. We request a resolution of at least 96 dpi or a minimum of 1024 x 768 pixels. In your e-mail, please give us a brief (3-4 sentence) description of your visual, in addition to a brief biography of yourself, including a few words on why you create visual images.

Please send your visual submission to: visuals@pulsevoices.org