Diary · Submissions

Write for Saint Kay Media

Everyone has a story they've told so many times they've stopped hearing it. We want the one underneath that, the version you'd tell one person at midnight when you weren't performing it.

Send your essay

Saint Kay Media publishes personal essays. True stories, told by the person they happened to, about what made them who they are and the questions they haven't settled. Nobody here has it figured out. What we have is people who are willing to look at their own lives honestly and say what they see.

We want writers at every phase of life. Just out of school and not sure who you are yet. In the middle of a career you didn't choose. Watching your kids leave and wondering what's left in the house that's yours. Starting over after a divorce, a move, a job that ended. Any phase, as long as you're 18 or older and you're in the middle of asking the question.

What we're looking for

The decision you didn't make, and where that other life might have gone.
The year everything fell apart at the same time.
What you'd say now to the person you were at 22, or 35, or 50.
The house that went quiet after the kids left. The job you walked out of. The marriage that ended. The friendship that just stopped. What happened after.
The story your family never told, and what you found when you went looking.
The time you did the thing you were sure you couldn't, and the time you didn't.
Finding yourself for the first time. Finding yourself again after you thought you were done. Realizing you'd been living someone else's idea of your life.

What we're not looking for

Advice. If your essay ends with a list of lessons, it isn't for us. Tell the story and let the reader find what's in it.
Anything that's already been published, including on your own blog, Substack, or social media.
Fiction dressed up as memoir. If it didn't happen to you, send it somewhere else.

It has to be yours

Write it yourself. If you want to run it through AI afterward to catch typos or fix a clunky sentence, that's editing and it's fine. If AI wrote it, or wrote most of it and you tidied the edges, don't send it. We'll know, and we won't publish it.

What we pay

$150 per essay, paid within 30 days of publication. We accept up to five outside essays a month, so we turn down a lot. If we say no, it usually means we already have something similar or it doesn't sound like the site. It isn't a judgment on you.

What you keep

You own your copyright. We get first publication and the right to keep the essay on our site and in our channels for as long as we're around. After it runs you can republish it anywhere, as long as you note that it first appeared at Saint Kay Media. We'll publish it with your name, a short bio, and one link to wherever you want people to find you.

How it works

You must be 18 or older to submit.
Send the finished essay, not a pitch. Somewhere between 1,200 and 2,500 words works best. Paste it into the form rather than attaching a file, and tell us in a couple of sentences who you are and why you wrote this one.
Send one essay at a time and wait to hear back before sending another.
We read everything and we reply to everything. We aim for three weeks, but we're a small team and it sometimes takes longer. If six weeks go by with no word, send us a nudge. If you've submitted the same piece elsewhere, that's fine, just let us know right away if someone else takes it.
If we want it, we'll edit it with you. That means real changes, and you'll see all of them before it goes live.

The terms

Plain language, but these are the terms you agree to by submitting.

You confirm the essay is your own original work, that you wrote it, and that it hasn't been published anywhere before.
You confirm it's true to the best of your knowledge and that you're responsible for the facts in it. Where you write about real people, you can change names and identifying details, and we encourage it. We won't publish anything we believe is defamatory or that invades someone's privacy, and we may ask you to adjust a piece before it runs.
We may edit for length, clarity, and house style. You'll see the edited version before it publishes. If we can't agree on the edit, either of us can withdraw the piece, with no payment owed.
Submitting doesn't obligate us to publish or pay. Payment is owed only once a piece is published on our site.
Once a piece is published we don't remove it on request except in unusual circumstances, so be sure you're ready for it to be out in the world under your name.
We'll ask published contributors for the information we need to pay you, including a tax form if you're in the US.
We use what you send us only to consider it for publication and to contact you about it. We don't share it, and we delete declined submissions after six months.