Call for Blog Pitches! – for April-June 2025 - Scottish BPOC Writers Network

We’re excited to be issuing our first open call for blog pitches of 2025!

For Black writers and writers of colour based in Scotland

Callout brief:

This call for pitches focuses on the theme ‘Sustain’! We’re looking for pitches about any and all interpretations of the concept of ‘sustain’, from tradition to food to the climate crisis and anything else that comes to mind.

Each guest blogger will be asked to contribute one blog post. This will be supplemented by a commissioned post from a fellow SBWN community author. We aim to publish 3 blog posts total during this period.

While all applicants must identify as Black writers or writers of colour (definition), there is absolutely no obligation to connect your pitch to ideas about race and diversity.

We especially encourage submissions from BPOC writers who are disabled, D/deaf, blind, chronically ill, or neurodivergent; are over 45 years old; are from the LGBTQIA+ community; are a parent or carer; and/or have never been published.

Please make sure you read our updated pitching guide before submitting: How to Pitch to SBWN.

If you want to pitch but are stuck for ideas, we’ve provided some prompts below. Please note that these are just starting points – if you have a pitch fitting the ‘sustain’ theme that falls outside this brief list, we’d love to read it!

Pitch prompts:

What sustains you?

‘Sustenance’ is another word for food and drink: necessities that one must take in daily to continue surviving. What do you continually take in to keep on going? Maybe it’s a beloved dish from your childhood, or a recipe you discovered after beginning a new stage in life. Maybe it’s a story, song, poem, TV series, game, or film you keep coming back to when times are hard. Is it getting out into nature, whether here in Scotland or somewhere further away? Or is it people near and far who give you the encouragement you need?

Sustainability in action

In the face of climate crisis, sustainability is an ever more pressing concern – but what does that actually look like in daily life? How do we reframe our relationships with the environment to facilitate workable sustainability practices? What misconceptions are holding us back, and what can we do as writers to overcome that?

Traditions and the passing on of practices

How do we sustain the traditions, practices, beliefs, and/or worldviews that have been passed down to us through the generations? Does sustaining these ancestral ways of being lean more towards preservation or towards evolution? Can new technology help us to sustain these, and in what ways? For those of us who feel cut off from our ancestors, whether through circumstance or choice, what is sustained when all other supports seem to fall away?

Loss and rebuilding

The word ‘sustain’ is sometimes used in reference to loss, injury, or other adversity. How do we endure and rebuild – sometimes even thrive – after or in the midst of harms? What happens when rebuilding isn’t an option? How do we respond to the changes brought on by the losses we sustain?

We can accept pitches in text, audio and/or video format: