are October 1st, January 1st,
April 1st and July 1st.
Description: Plant Healer Magazine is intended to both instruct and inspire, educate
and disseminate, instigate and empower. It represents a broad range of voices and
experiences, from traditional Appalachian root doctors to urban herbalists working in
inner city free clinics. As healers and healthcare practitioners, we are sustained in part
by a community of peers as well as our relationship with the plants and people we
work with. Plant Healer Magazine seeks not only to to provide information (and even
entertainment) but to also create a vibrant and active community that supports and
represents the living herbal traditions and folk practitioners of the Western world.
What We’re Looking For: The editors are looking for material that is fresh and exciting,
deeply considered and well researched, but also passionate and subjective, and
grounded in personal and clinical experience. By “clinical experience” we mean any
experience gained while working directly as an herbalist with other human beings.
This can be working in your own office or being employed by an official clinic, but it
can just as well mean being a volunteer street medic, helping to heal folks in your
community on an informal basis, or even credibly using plants in the treatment of your
own self and family. Experience with plant relationship and ecology, wildcrafting,
conservation and activism is equally valued, depending on the department. Vision is
exciting, but all the more so with the addition of experience and results, synthesis and
real-world application.
We will give special preference to articles that are folk hearted and grassroots, place
based and nature-informed, that are in their own way novel or edgy, that challenge
assumptions and the status quo, encourage folks to learn and work with herbs without
any official title or authorization, promote the well being of the plants and planet as
well as our human kind, inspire new ways of thinking and more effective ways of
treating and healing.
How To Submit: Currently, Plant Healer Magazine accepts unsolicited articles, essays,
interviews, profiles, case studies and related material. Please send your submission in
the body of an email to Kiva@PlantHealerMagazine.com with the words “Magazine
Submission” in the subject line.
We need to know: If your piece has ever appeared in print or online anywhere else,
and where and when if so.
Also, please direct your material to a specific department, as listed and described below.
No more than 3 submission per person at one time.
Visual Art Submissions
Illustrations and photographs, especially those related to a specific article, are also
welcomed. Due to the strict satellite internet download limits we work under, you must
upload to our FTP site and not send them as attachments. Query us first!
All images must be 300 dpi CMYK, since Plant Healer Magazine is a high quality PDF
suitable for printing. Please submit your image query within your article submission.
Or, if submitting images separately from an article, please send a query with the words
“image query” in the subject line to Kiva@PlantHealerMagazine.com
Or you can upload directly to our FTP site as follows:
• host: animacenter.org
• login: planthealer@animacenter.org
• password: planthealermagazine
Departments and Word Limits
Traditions in Focus: Exploring Western Folk Medicine (Word Limit: 3,000
words)
Highlighting and exploring the vast terrain of plant-based folk medicine of the Western
world, including profiles, interviews, stories and personal anecdotes.
The Primordium: Field Botany (Word Limit: 1,500 words)
Ongoing coverage of the how and why of field botany, especially relating to the direct
applicability for the wildcrafter, gardener and herbalist.
Into the Forest: ReWilding From The Roots (Word Limit: 2,000 words)
Highlighting foraging techniques, many plant-based primitive skills and other ways of
nourishing the primal spirit shared by people and plant. Profiles on wild edible foods,
instructions on harvesting, processing and preserving and much more.
From the Hearth: Traditional Foodways (Word Limit: 2,000 words)
Nutritional therapy and food as medicine with a focus on traditional foods. Recipes,
therapeutics, approaches to nutrition and looks at specific traditional dietary practices.
The Allies: Plant Profiles & Monographs (Word Limit: 3,000 words)
In-depth and intimate looks at medicinal plants, their properties, actions and ways of
working with them.
Constitutional Approaches & Herbal Energetics (Word Limit: 3,000 words)
Common sense and sensory perspectives on the actions of medicinal plants and
observable constitutional patterns of human physiology within clinical and/or
traditional contexts.
Seeing Folks: Case Studies & Therapeutics (Word Limit: 2,000 words)
Hands-on, up-close looks at ways of treating dis-ease, pathophysiology and imbalance
in the body including nutritional, herbal, lifestyle and other approaches, but with a
focus on botanical medicine.
A Distillation: Herbal Medicine Making (Word Limit: 1,500 words)
Techniques, approaches, recipes and explorations of plant-based medicine making, both
traditional and new.
BirthRoot: Midwifery & Herbal Childcare (Word Limit: 2,000 words)
Addressing the ways in which botanical medicine can support and intersect with
midwifery as well as practical approaches to treating children with herbs.
From the Ground Up: Conservation, Restoration and Propagation (Word Limit:
3,000 words)
Personal stories, essays, how-to’s and everything in between, all focused on ways in
which we can preserve, proliferate and restore plants and the land they grow from on a
local, national and world-wide basis.
A Weedy Revolution: Advocacy and Activism (Word Limit: 2,000 words)
Working to increase accessibility of healthcare, protect wild land/plants and traditional
medicine, provide sustainable medicine and preserve the practitioner’s right to work
within their communities through essays that raise awareness, stories that inspire, direct
action how-to and more.
Editing
Your editors reserve the right to shorten or otherwise edit your work for space or clarity.
You can ask to approve any such edits, if you feel the need.
Compensation
As a contributor you will receive:
1. A copy of the issue that your work appears in
2. A 60 word bio in the issue you appear in, containing your contact information/url
3. A business card sized graphic ad that you provide, printed in the same issue
4. Our informal networking and promoting of your work, in all ways possible
Rights
By submitting, you are giving Plant Healer Magazine nonexclusive printing and
reprinting rights, including possible inclusion in a future collection. All other rights to
the use of your piece remain with you, the creator.
We do ask as a courtesy, that you refrain from publishing your piece online or in any
print magazines for 1 year from the time it appears in Plant Healer Magazine.
More information here.
This blog is no longer updated. Please instead visit Writers For Diversity for new opportunities for women/ LGBT writers and writers of color. Thank you.
