Submission Guidelines: Writing and Photography

Alberta Land & Life explores the road less travelled. We expect prospective contributors to seek out the great variety and diversity in this province. Your challenge is to peel back the layers, whether it is in the city, a small town, countryside, or the wilderness and reveal the many faces of those places. Our stories are about people and how they live, work and enjoy urban or rural life. Read the Ranchers and Rattlesnakes feature in the first issue, or Paradise beyond the Divide in the second, and you will begin to grasp our style and messages. It's not all country; there will be urban stories in future issues.

Our stories follow either a feature-length format (i.e. Headwaters, through The Ya Ha Tinda and The Upper Red in Issue One) or an essay style (Paradise Beyond the Divide). The editorial mix combines text, photographs, maps, and in some cases, illustrations. We're in both the communication and entertainment business therefore we seek the most effective means possible to combine these elements into a good story. As our banner states, we aim to provide information about adventures, nature, travel, events, history, geography, culture and more. We are more likely to run a story that appeals to a broad range of reader demographics and we are partial to new, fresh themes rather than the same old familiar and tired story lines. Be creative!

If you're a writer who has not taken any or enough good photos to support the story, we need to know what images could accompany it. We request you email us with a query; then we will contact you to assess the feasibility of the story for content and then assess photography needs. At that time, we'll also provide you with our Writers Guidelines. First-time writers are very welcome but we recommend reading William Zinssers "On Writing Well". It can purchased on-line or at most bookstores. Writers must be prepared to visit communities that they are writing about on more than one occasion and we don't carry stories conducted by telephone interviews. We expect positive stories that share real life experiences. Sensationalistic, attack-style journalism is not our style, nor we do print stories that proselytize or talk down to readers.

If you specialize in photography but don't consider yourself a writer, email us with any idea that you want us to consider-we get excited about great photographs. We intend to provide our readers with fresh new images specifically linked to each story therefore we don't purchase stock photography. Consider us dinosaurs, but most digital photography is still inferior to good slide transparencies. With few exceptions, we will accept digital photos up to one page in size, but not for double page spreads.

Thanks for your interest in Alberta Land & Life; perhaps our readers will view your name in the contents and credits.

Four Seasons Publishing & Communications Inc.
P.O. Box 54006
Edmonton Alberta T6A 3Y7

bpeters@planet.eon.net