After more than three decades, Celebrate Life continues to be the pro-life movement’s premier publication. Our mission is to inspire, encourage and educate pro-life activists.
Celebrate Life is faith-based and features human-interest stories, news, action items, information and advice on a wide range of matters concerning the sanctity of life and human personhood. Each issue features a variety of articles, all of which must be in harmony with the teachings of the Catholic Church.
With a nationwide circulation of approximately 35,000, Celebrate Life offers writers a national venue for their work, and we are pleased to consider your article for publication. We purchase first rights to original material, including book reviews. As a general rule, we do not accept reprints, poetry or works of fiction.
Themes
• Abortion
• Adoption
• Chastity
• Contraception and sterilization
• Elder care and respect for the dignity of the elderly
• Stem cell research or therapy—moral and immoral approaches
• Euthanasia
• Eugenics
• Exceptions in abortion laws (i.e., for rape, incest, life of the mother, gross fetal deformity, etc.)—why we must oppose them
• Human cloning
• Human personhood and the personhood movement
• Infertility—moral and immoral approaches
• Marriage, as it relates to other topics on this list
• Miscarriage and stillbirth
• False definitions of death
• Organ/tissue donation—moral and immoral approaches
• Natural family planning
• Parenting in accordance with pro-life/pro-chastity values
• Population control and population decline
• Pro-life activists and heroes
• Pro-life/anti-life activities and legislation/initiatives
• Sex education
• Special-needs children/parenting/adoption
• Special-needs/disabled/chronically ill adults
• Unplanned pregnancy
• Vaccines made from aborted babies or human embryonic materials; vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases (such as Gardasil)
We are always seeking holiday-related material that relates specifically to at least one of the abovementioned topics in our theme list. Our greatest need is for stories set during (or relating to) Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day/Father’s Day, and national holidays such as Memorial Day, Independence Day and Thanksgiving. Such material can be created by adding a holiday-related tie-in to an article dealing with a topic in our theme list.
Examples of potential articles:
• Interviews with prominent pro-life activists
• Current laws and their effect on pro-lifers
• Interviews with birth mothers, adoptive mothers and people who were adopted as children
• Interviews with rape or incest victims who didn’t abort their babies (emphasis on the fact that we cannot allow exceptions in our defense of life, and that abortion—a traumatic procedure—does not relieve but only exacerbates the initial trauma of the rape or incest)
• How to start a pro-life activity or group in your community or church
Submission guidelines
Electronic manuscripts:
Material may be submitted to Celebrate Life on a CD or floppy disk, or via e-mail. Include the article within the e-mail text or as a Microsoft Word attachment.
Paper manuscripts:
Type or print all paper manuscripts in 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced on clean white paper, with one-inch margins. On the first page of the manuscript, include the following:
• manuscript title
• author's name
• address, phone number and e-mail address (if you have one)
• daytime phone number
• date
• approximate word count
Include the author’s name and the manuscript title at the top of each subsequent page.
Number all pages. Limit article length to 1,600 words unless instructed otherwise by the Celebrate Life editorial staff.
Time-sensitive articles (referring to current legislation/news or holiday-oriented) should be noted in a cover letter. Current-events articles, holiday articles, and articles with appropriate photos or artwork get top priority in our processing procedure.
Please mail manuscripts to Celebrate Life and enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) for return of unused manuscripts.
Again, articles submitted with appropriate pictures (or for which pictures are available) receive highest priority.
Photography guidelines
Celebrate Life is pleased to consider your article for publication. We believe that each story is enhanced by the photos of the subjects and characters and helps draw the readers in. We will be happy to accept photos for articles as either digital files or hardcopy originals and have prepared these guidelines to help you in the process of getting the best quality images/or sending your originals to us.
Digital images:
- Images can be sent via email (one or two at a time) or mailed to ALL on CD
- Digital photos need to be uncompressed, high resolution JPEG files (.jpg) or TIFF (.tif) files.
- The minimum file size that will be accepted is 600x900 pixels (two inches by three inches, at a resolution of 300dpi). We prefer images of 2240x1680 pixels or higher.
- Please note that images that look great on a web page won’t always work in print. For example, a 360 x 504 pixel image that appears to be 5 x 7 inches at the web resolution of 72 dpi will shrink to 1 x 1.5 inches at the print resolution of 300 dpi.
Hard-copy original photographic prints:
The design and production department for Celebrate Life magazine has one of the best color scanners available and we will welcome any original photos that you would send to accompany your article and be assured we will take the utmost care in handling them and ensure their safe return.
For your convenience, peace of mind and the safe transport of your precious photo memories we will provide you our Fed-X account number to facilitate the shipping and return of the photos.
If you need help with any part of this process we will be happy to assist in whatever way we can. Contact clmag@all.org.