Pitches are open for our CELEBRATE issue

Pitch us by February 28, 2025

We’re calling for pitches for our ninth issue, CELEBRATE. Please read or pass on the brief below if you’re interested in pitching or know someone who might be. Pitches will be open at pitch@feministfoodjournal.com until midnight CET, on February 28, 2025.

Learn more about pitching FFJ in our guidelines.

“Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.” – Martin Luther

"Last Supper", Speculum Humanae Salvationis, XIVth century.

We’re calling for pitches for CELEBRATE, Feminist Food Journal’s ninth issue. Through the lens of food and gender, CELEBRATE encompasses celebration in its various definitions: “to take part in enjoyable activities in order to show that a particular occasion is important” and “to express administration or approval for something or someone.”

CELEBRATE is born from three sentiments we’re sitting with as 2025 unfolds:

First, there’s no denying that the current moment feels grim. From watching a genocide unfold in Palestine to witnessing the escalating impacts of global heating to staring down a four-year political apocalypse in the US, the ramifications of which are already reverberating across the world — it’s been a lot, and we’ve struggled with feeling hopeless. Yet, we need hope to keep working towards building the worlds we want to live in. And to have hope, we need to experience joy, to know that we still have things worth celebrating. We’ve chosen a verb as the theme for this issue to emphasize our agency and power in what can feel like a powerless time.

Second, we love a good celebration — and in our view, there’s nothing vapid about this. We have experienced so many potent moments around dinner tables, at dance clubs, in community spaces, and at family gatherings. These moments feel even more sacred in times when spaces for people with marginalized identities to experience them are under attack. Coming together in pleasurable forms, and celebrating oneself through pleasurable practices, is intentional and important, even if it’s not all there is to the work. (A recent Reductress headline, ‘Joy Is an Act of Resistance!’ Says White Woman Who Engages in No Other Acts of Resistance, highlights the insidious absurdity of self-indulgence without political organization.)

Third, we’re celebrating the fact that later this week, FFJ will be turning three — a milestone in the tumultuous world of online publishing and one that we couldn’t have made it to without your support.

Cover illustration by Zoë Johnson.

With CELEBRATE, we want to look at celebration — conviviality, commensality, the elevation of the everyday, and the reverence of the sacred — as a radical act: an act of self-care, of community-building, of political resistance. We’re curious about how to harness the power of celebration for wider change, but also how celebration makes a difference at a micro-level, including for how we feel at home in ourselves. At the same time, we want to know more about how celebrations can serve to demarcate differences and separate us from our communities or societies, or to distract us from the real work at hand.

In general, we’re looking for pitches that use the theme to make wider points about the culture and politics of the present day, covering topics like:

• The power and politics of dinner parties — conversations that have changed your life, for better or worse

• The gendered dynamics of celebrations — emotional labour, food labour, social labour

• Convivial commensality (i.e., the act of eating together in celebration) as a tool of political organization and resistance

• Convivial commensality (i.e., the act of eating together in celebration) as a tool of exclusion and oppression

• Being forced to celebrate a holiday, because you feel you should or someone is pressuring you

• Dynamics of family, culture, and identity through the lens of gathering for celebration

• The politics of joy, pleasure, and taking a break

• Untold, lesser-known, or misunderstood stories of cultural celebrations

• Untold, lesser-known, or misunderstood stories of people or foods that have been celebrated at some point in history (by wider society, certain communities, or just by you!)

• Anniversaries, birthdays, and rituals and why they matter (to society, or just to you!)

• Celebrations as self-care, investigations of self-care in an era of commodification

• Crazy parties (we are big fans of these)

• The intersection of club culture, food (Eisbar? Rave candy? Cake sitting?), and gender/power/sex

• Celebrations without food! What can we say about the absence?

• The aestheticization/Instagrammification of celebrations and celebratory food (cutting into a blue cake for a baby’s sex reveal party?)

• Interviews with DJs, party curators, or caterers

This rambling list of topics is, as always, just a starter. We are open to — in fact, ravenous for — other creative interpretations of the theme. Remember that celebration does not have to be the piece’s main focus; it can also be used as an entry point to explore other facets of politics and culture. However, all stories should incorporate a link to food and power in some way.

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Not pitching, but still want to support our work? Become a premium subscriber now! Feminist Food Journal is turning three on February 15 and your support would be a generous gift.

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We publish stories in myriad mediums and formats: personal essay/memoir, long-form narrative, recipes, poetry, interviews, podcasts, videos, photography, and digital art works. In your pitch, please let us know what format you’re planning to work with and the piece’s approximate length (words if written, minutes if audio). Remember that a topic is not a story; your pitch should make the “so-what” of your idea clear.

For more information, you can find our full pitch guidelines here. We pay a flat rate of USD$130 per piece and $50 for shorter works/poems. As of February 2025, we have nearly 3,500 subscribers, and we put a lot of care and time into working with writers to find their voice.

Pitches will close at midnight CET on Friday, February 28th. Please send all pitches to pitch@feministfoodjournal.com, and make sure the subject line specifies that the email is a pitch for CELEBRATE.

If you know someone who might be interested in writing for us but didn’t receive this newsletter, please do pass it on!

Celebrating our weirdness.