| Editorial Guidelines |
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The BAM welcomes letters, story ideas, and writing from alumni. To send a class note, a letter to the editor, or a story suggestion, use one of the e-mail forms found at Contact BAM. Because of the small size of the BAM editorial staff and the volume of alumni correspondence we receive, responding to manuscript submissions in particular may take several weeks. For more detailed information about submissions to various sections of the magazine, scroll down or click on the links below.
Mail Room The BAM welcomes letters to the editor, and we print as many as space allows. Letters must address the content of the magazine, so please refer to a specific article or item from the magazine when you write. (Mail Room is not an open forum for venting about Brown.) We also print your city and state with your letter, so please remember to include them. Also, whenever possible we include a correspondent's e-mail address, so please make sure to specify which e-mail address you would like to appear in the magazine or whether you do not want your e-mail address to appear in the magazine at all. We sometimes receive many letters expressing the same opinion about an article. In such cases, we print a representative sample of the opinions expressed; our goal is to make sure all opinions are represented, not all individuals. Finally, most letters are edited for space, usage, style, civility, and clarity. In cases where the edit is substantial and risks distorting the substance or spirit of your opinion, you will allowed to review our edit and make changes. As with any magazine, the editors reserve the right to decide whether a letter is acceptable for publication. The BAM prints three 750-word P.O.V. (Point of View) columns: faculty, alumni, and student. Each is a reflection on a particular topic of interest to our readers. The topic may or may not be Brown related and may be treated humorously or seriously. The purpose of the P.O.V.s is to allow members of the Brown community to connect with one another in their own voices as human beings; any detail of the broad canvas of human experience is fair game as subject matter. The P.O.V.s are not OpEds or editorials for taking overtly political stands, although many pieces have political ramifications. Because the writing in these essays is so crucial to their success, we do not assign P.O.V.s based on a story proposal. We recommend that you send us your completed essay after you look over some recent examples to make sure that we have not just published an essay similar to the one you wish to write. The easiest way to send us a class note is by filling out this form. Because of the hundreds of class notes we include in each issue, many class notes are edited for length and style. Class notes also appear on the magazine's Web site; please let us know if you do not want all or part of your note to appear on our Web site. (Class notes on our Web site are searchable not only by the site's search engine, but by such commercial search engines as Google.) Although we check names and class years, we cannot verify the accuracy of every fact in The Classes section. To determine the issue in which your class note will appear, please check the deadlines listed on the first page of The Classes section in the print BAM. Obituaries are written or assigned by the BAM staff. Survivors can submit information by going to the Submit an obituary page. The Arts & Culture section consists of reviews and features assigned or written by the BAM staff. The reviews are true reviews and reflect the opinion of the reviewer, not of the magazine staff. We invite all alumni and faculty to send us work they would like to see mentioned in the section. Because of the volume of material we receive, we unfortunately do not have room to mention every work by every alumnus, alumna, or faculty member. Although many of the BAM features are staff-written, the magazine does accept story proposals from freelance writers and story ideas from alumni and faculty. Because the magazine publishes between eighteen and twenty-four full length features a year, space is very limited, however. Freelancers wishing to propose a feature should send a one-page proposal along with writing samples. Because of the small size of the BAM staff and the volume of story pitches we receive, we may take several weeks to respond to story proposals. |