About The Plenary & Submission Guidelines

The Plenary is an online community blog for PLEN alumnI and supporters to mentor, collaborate, and share essential professional and life lessons they’ve learned during and after their PLEN seminars.

1. Why should I submit to The Plenary?

Mentoring happens in many forms; it’s not only in face-to-face meetings where you can support other women and marginalized gender groups.  Additionally, perhaps one of the skills that PLEN speakers emphasize the most is the ability to write effectively.  As we’ve learned, no matter what career you decide to pursue, writing skills are essential.  What better way to practice your writing skills, add a published section to your resume, create a writing sample, and help support other PLEN students than by sharing your stories and advice?

2. What should I write about?

One of our favorite topics to read about is your PLEN experience: the people you met, the lessons that you learned, the things that surprised and motivated you throughout your seminar.  Whether you went to a seminar this year or decades ago, we want to hear about your experience and how PLEN is still a part of your life.  There are amazing PLEN alumni across the country (and the world) doing amazing things, and we want to hear from you!  

We also want to hear about the lessons you've learned since your PLEN seminar.  Some of these topics include salary negotiation tips, landing your first job, finance and budgeting, how to find a mentor, preparing for a job interview, and essential questions to ask at an informational interview, though this list is by no means exhaustive. Whether you’re in your first job or advanced in your career, you have an important perspective to share with other students. 

3. How do I submit?

You can submit your articles to plen@plen.org.  The ideal PLEN article is 1,000-2,000 words and touches on any of the topics listed above.  You can also read more about our submission guidelines below.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES TO THE PLENARY

Please read the following submission guidelines carefully before submitting your work to The Plenary. If you have any additional questions, contact the Communications Manager at plen@plen.org.

WHAT TO SEND US

1. In the body of the email:
   1. A brief author biography with (1) your name, (2) the PLEN seminar you attended (or spoke at), (3) your university, (4) your year of graduation or anticipated graduation, and (5) any links to your social media accounts you’d like to share (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn.)
   2. Contact information: (1) your email (preferably not your school email) and (2) phone number (this information is for our record only and will not be published.)
2. Attached to the email (please do not send any PDFs):
   1. Your article fully formatted in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, with photos and article title included.
   2. If there are any photos included in the Word/Google version of your article please also attach them to your emailed submission as separate .jpg or .png file(s).
   3. A headshot or photo of you at a PLEN event (Format: .jpg or .png)

MORE INFORMATION ON SUBMISSIONS

EDITORIAL NOTES

All articles submitted to The Plenary are subjected to editing by the PLEN editorial staff.  Remember that The Plenary is a representation of PLEN, a nonpartisan organization.  We will not post any articles that support or reject one party, candidate, or political organization over another.  You can use subheadings and formatting to emphasize your main points.  You can add links to other websites or articles within your posts.  In addition to sending us your social media contact information, you may also link to your social media accounts in your author bio.  If you would like to add photos to your article, format the photos in your word document and also attach photos as a .jpg or .png in your submission.

LENGTH

The ideal length for an article for The Plenary is 1,000-2,000 words, but we will accept submissions of 500 words to 3,000 words.  The title of your article should be 8-12 words long.

FORMAT

We will only accept submissions through email to the Communications Manager at plen@plen.org. Please attach your submission as a Microsoft Word document or Google Doc.  Please do not send us a PDF attachment.

MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS

You may submit more than one different article, as many times as you’d like.  Each article must be submitted separately with all of the necessary attachments, including the author biography.  If you submitted an article, we may send it back to you to edit or reject it on the basis of quality, topic, or appropriateness.  If we send an article back to you for you to edit, you are welcome to resubmit once the proper changes are made.  If we do not explicitly state that you may edit and resubmit a rejected submission, please do not resubmit.

We will consider regular contributors on a case-by-case basis.  If you’re interested in becoming a regular contributor (submitting articles weekly, biweekly, or monthly) contact the Communications Manager at plen@plen.org.

SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS

You may submit work that has been published elsewhere (on your own personal blog, etc) as long as the content is 100% yours.

RESPONSE TIME

We will respond to all submissions within 21 days of our receipt of the work.  If accepted, we will contact you 7 days prior to your publication on The Plenary.

COMPENSATION

At this time, we are unable to provide compensation to writers who contribute to The Plenary.