Submit to the Wave
Let’s start something
Please note: Once you submit, please give us plenty of time to respond. We have no paid staff. Also, if you don’t follow the instructions below on how and what to submit, we can’t respond to you. You must submit a draft composed on Medium (not in Word or on Google Docs, etc.). You also need to have your private notes turned on so we can communicate with you (accept or reject) directly on the draft. We’d love to give better service and write you a personal email, but we don’t have the womanpower. Please help us to help you by doing it right.
Why submit to Fourth Wave?
Fourth Wave is here to create a community where we can talk about things of interest to women and other targeted groups. We are looking for stories about sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, income inequality, environmental destruction, and other blights. We also like reviews — because media matters — and humor, fiction, and poetry about feminism and other social justice themes. And we love submissions from authors of diverse cultures and people who live outside the U.S., because we believe that if we come together to support and educate each other, we can make the world a better place for everyone to live.
Let’s start something!
How to submit
To submit a story, you must first create a draft on Medium and then submit a link to that draft via our . We don’t accept links to google docs, dropbox, or submissions in any other form, nor do we accept published pieces. Requesting to be added as a writer in the comments doesn’t work, either. We want to read your draft first. Also, please be patient! We get a lot of submissions and have no paid staff. It may take a week for us to review your draft and let you know via private message whether or not we want to publish your piece in Fourth Wave.
What about a boost?
If it’s a super strong piece, we will nominate it for a Boost, which will earn you wider distribution on the platform if curators agree it’s a boost-worthy piece: 95 percent of boosted stories gain 500 views over the first two weeks. We’re proud to be a member of the Boost Program! You can learn more about the program and how it works here.
When considering which stories to grant a boost to, curators consider Medium’s Quality Guidelines along with the following:
1. Is the reader’s life enriched by reading the story?
2. Is it original, human-created content?
3. Does the author speak from relevant knowledge and experience?
4. Is the story well-crafted?
5. Does the story have impact?
Format your submission according to FW style
To learn how to get your story ready for publication, watch the instructional video below or read our Stylesheet.
When your piece is ready to go, drop a draft link in our . We only accept drafts. We no longer accept published pieces because the algorithm doesn’t give them any love, meaning it might not bring you any more reads if you move your older piece into Fourth Wave. Also, because we spend a lot of time and care on each submission, and want to make sure the author approves of our changes, and wants that kind of attention to detail.
What happens next?
Once we accept a piece, we will edit it for grammar etc. if needed and format it to match Fourth Wave style. We often make formatting changes to add visual appeal, usually by adding sections with subheads and/or drop quotes. We sometimes change the headline or subhead if it is too long or doesn’t accurately impart the content of the story. And we always correct for spelling, punctuation, and grammar; and add the Fourth Wave promo at the bottom of each piece (after a 3 dot separator).
We won’t make major changes to the writing without the author’s permission, and you maintain editing power while your story is in FW, including the power to withdraw it from the publication.
That said, while it’s okay to inform editors that you don’t wish to have drop quotes and sections with subheads inserted in your story, it is not okay to use the formatting tools incorrectly, or to make major changes to your story after we’ve published it without informing us.
For more information on how to use the quote format functions in the way they were designed to be used, read this. To learn more about standard formatting style, which we follow, take a look at our Stylesheet.
In addition to formatting to match our (standard) style, please include one or more of our topics so that your story will place in the right section on our home page and subpages. Those topics are: World, Women, Health, Media (for reviews of books, movies, shows, and music), and Writing (for poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction or memoir; also stories about writing).
If you have questions, send an email to [email protected]. If you want more information, see our more detailed Submission Guidelines.
Best of luck. We hope to see your work here soon!
Credit the artist
BTW, our beautiful masthead was created by Leila Register. .
Backstory: what does the name “Fourth Wave” mean?
Fourth wave is a feminist term. The banner at the top of our publication is a visual representation of the four waves of the feminist movement.
First Wave: Suffragettes created the first wave of feminism which earned American women the right to vote in 1920 and focused on overturning legal barriers to gender inequality.
Second Wave: The second wave came in the 1960s and ’70s and broadened the movement to include issues of sexuality, family, the workplace, and reproductive rights. It’s represented by Gloria Steinem and a poster promoting the ERA (the Equal Rights Amendment, which never passed) in our banner.
Third Wave: The third wave appeared in the 1990s, provoked by Anita Hill’s testimony to the U.S. Congress about sexual harassment in the workplace by Clarence Thomas. After he was confirmed as a justice on the Supreme Court despite Hill’s brave and credible testimony, women across the U.S. felt betrayed. The start of the third wave is credited to Rebecca Walker (daughter of Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker) who used the term in a piece about the hearings that was published in Steinem’s Ms. Magazine. That’s why both Hill and a portion of Walker’s piece represent the third wave on our banner. Here’s part of what she said:
“So I write this as a plea to all women, especially women of my generation: Let Thomas’ confirmation serve to remind you, as it did me, that the fight is far from over. Let this dismissal of a woman’s experience move you to anger. Turn that outrage into political power. Do not vote for them unless they work for us. Do not have sex with them, do not break bread with them, do not nurture them if they don’t prioritize our freedom to control our bodies and our lives. I am not a post-feminism feminist. I am the Third Wave.”
— Rebecca Walker
In addition to expressing righteous anger at a system that ignored women’s right not to be sexually harassed, the third wave sought to redefine the term feminist, arguing for more diversity and individuality.
Fourth Wave: The fourth wave of feminism is the era we are in today. It started around 2012 and focuses on empowering women using internet tools. But the fourth wave isn’t just about gender. It builds on the concept of “intersectionality” introduced in the third wave, which recognizes that most women are oppressed by more than gender. For example, if you are Black and a woman, you are oppressed by both those aspects of your identity. If you are gay, Black, and a woman, you have three intersections of oppression. If you are poor, Black, gay, and a woman, you have four, etc.
The work of the fourth wave is to expand the feminist movement beyond a White middle class woman’s perspective to advocate for equality for ALL types of women, and all types of people, because as Martin Luther King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”
As Martin Luther King said,“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”
That’s why the fourth wave is represented in our banner by a Mexican woman holding up a sign during a protest against police mistreatment of women in that country. Written in Spanish, her sign says, “They don’t protect me. They rape me.” These are the kinds of issues we want to discuss in this publication.
Please join us in pushing the world in a positive direction. Help us realize the dream of equal rights for all. Submit a story and/or follow Fourth Wave.
Let’s start something!
