Thank you for your interest in contributing to the American Catholic Quarterly Review.
What we publish
The American Catholic Quarterly Review aims to be the journal of record for American Catholic intellectual life.
We seek work that occupies a middle position between popular and specialist writing. Examples would be a well-developed Thomistic Institute lecture, a substantive homily, a thoughtful commencement address, or an essay that distills the central argument of a more technical work (a law review article, for instance) into a form accessible to the general readers among our subscribers, so that they may engage it with profit.
Tone and register
All published essays will be written in a high register and marked by exemplary politeness and civility. Contributions should be politically non-partisan. They may take positions on, and argue strongly for, any matter of free opinion, but such arguments should at least implicitly acknowledge that others may reasonably disagree.
Length
We accept essays from 750 words to 5,000 words or more. Longer essays are typically serialized across issues, in consultation with the author.
Exclusive submission
We consider only essays submitted to the Review alone. An essay offered simultaneously to another publication will not be considered. While an essay is under consideration, the author should not offer it elsewhere.
We aim to reply within two weeks. An author who has not heard from us by then is free to withdraw the essay and submit it elsewhere.
Prior publication
Essays must not have appeared previously in print or online, including on a personal website, a Substack, or a social-media account. A lecture, homily, or address as delivered is not prior publication; but please tell us where it was given and whether a recording or transcript has been posted. We welcome essays which are fuller executions of ideas that have been sketched or tested out elsewhere.
Rights
Copyright remains with the author. We ask for first publication rights in the Review, and for exclusive rights for six months after publication. Thereafter the author may republish the essay elsewhere, with an acknowledgment of its first appearance in the American Catholic Quarterly Review.
How to submit
Send your essay as a Word (.docx) or other text document to the Editor-in-Chief, Michael Pakaluk, at pakaluk@cua.edu. Please include a brief cover note, a two-sentence author biography, and the word count. Contributors whom the Editor has invited to write need not follow this procedure.