Before submitting a contribution to Keep Left, please read the below guidelines and try to follow them best you can in your work.

Ultimately, the Editorial Board is the final decision maker on what does and does not get published, and we will work with you to ensure your contribution meets the standards of our publication — but keeping these guidelines in mind as you work will make our job much easier.

Relevance

Keep Left seeks to advance the workers’ movement through the sharing of knowledge, personal experience, and creative works. Your contribution does not need to be explictly focused on “politics” as it is generally understood, however we expect written work to broadly touch on progressive ideas, and in some sense channel leftist values in your work.

This is not something that can or should be rigidly policed, and we leave you to interpret it how you wish. We also believe that sharing of artwork and personal expression is inherently progressive. So, if your contribution is more on the artistic side, don’t worry too much about whether your work is “political”. It is!

Quality

When it comes to written submissions in particular, we expect a basic level of structure such that your work is not too difficult to follow. Mistakes in grammar and punctuation are natural and copy editing is trivial, so don’t stress about that, but make sure your contribution has a broadly comprehensible narrative/thesis/structure. Not all writing can be easily categorised, but make sure it is reasonably clear what you are trying to do.

Conscience

We refuse to publish any content that villifies an individual or group based on their gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, religion, or appearance. If you submit content which even resembles racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, or Islamophobia; you will be barred from ever contributing to our magazine.

In a wider sense, we at Keep Left are not in the business of mudslinging. Criticism of individuals and institutions is welcome, though if your content is primarily driven by a personal dislike of someone/something, we encourage you to question whether publishing it is valuable. Of course, we believe things like comedy and satire can be incredibly valuable, but if that is what you’re going for it has to be clear.