The Rake Magazine

Who Are We?

The Rake is the Twin Cities' premier story teller. We are a general interest magazine of stories, essays, reportage, and humor; a magazine for people who live, work, and play in the Twin Cities and beyond.

Before making your pitch, please remember that The Rake is:

• Committed to a storytelling esthetic; we value setting, characterization, plot, emotional and intellectual content. To paraphrase your mother, if you can't say something well, don't say anything at all.
• Humorous without being cynical. But we will defend the good honor of irony to the death, if necessary. (Watch the hyperbole, though.)
• About complex issues, real people, and exact locations.
• Not overtly political, and when political, not overtly predictable. Frankly, we tend toward the contrarian.

A story that is destined for The Rake is true, clear, delightful, and sincere.

Sections, Departments, and Features

The Rakish Angle

(approximately 500-800 words each)
This is our signature section, consisting of short, unexplored tangents on current news and issues, colorful scene pieces, profiles, and dispatches from both local neighborhoods and far-flung places. Every month we shoot for a mix of the breezy and the substantive, and we’re always looking for stuff from off the beaten track, snapshots of under-covered local scenes and characters, and humorous perspectives on mundane topics. The ideal Rakish Angle writer would bring curiosity and enthusiasm to the subject at hand, have an appreciation for passion and obsession, and be willing to keep personal commentary and opinion to a minimum.

Please note: this is not a place for first person musings. Describe what you see, hear, feel and smell, not what you think about something. Let the reader figure that out for him or herself through your description.

Features

(anywhere from 800-3000 words)
Profiles, interviews, investigative reports. While The Rake is not necessarily out to scoop daily papers, our unique angle and mission allow us to explore interesting and bizarre angles and tangents. Both serious and funny, we want to report true stories truthfully—with the understanding that truth is frequently stranger than fiction, and a damn sight funnier too.

PLEASE NOTE: At present, we are most interested in original reporting and investigative journalism. These stories can be of local/regional interest (to our Upper Midwest readership), or of national interest.

Rake Appeal

(approximately 500–700 words)
This section covers trends in fashion, health and beauty, automotives, and home. The ideal Rake Appeal writer has the nose to spot consumer trends early on but, more important, the ability to dissect those trends in a smart, substantive (and often humorous) way. Again, the editorial voice favors work that keeps first-person commentary and opinion at bay. Reported articles and essays, which incorporate the voices of various experts, are preferred. Regular departments include fashion, home, body, Object Lust (essays about a favorite object or consumer product), Show & Tell (profiles of local characters as told through their possessions), and Sweet Spot (pieces about interesting corners of the metro or small towns in and about the Twin Cities).

Fiction

(700-5000 words)
The Rake publishes one piece of short fiction each month. We're always looking for interesting and well-written stories, whether they be models of old-fashioned storytelling or quirkier pieces with a modern sensibility. Length is open. Email attachments are preferable, although we'll also look at manuscripts that come through the door. Previous contributors include Stuart Dybek, Ron Carlson, Dawn Raffel, Bart Schneider, John Biguenet, Alicia Conroy, Alan DeNiro, and Kate DiCamillo.

Gray Matters: Reviews

(800-2400 words)
Reviews, Columns, and Unsolicited Advice from relentless know-it-alls.
The Rake departs from the usual mix of exhaustive and exhausting critical reviews of every CD, movie, book, and video game under the sun. Instead, we dedicate significant space to one or two lengthy pieces of thoughtful criticism about significant events and artifacts. Quality is the watchword here, not quantity.

What We Buy

We buy first worldwide serial rights, and ask that you not resell your article within 30 days of publication. After these 30 days, we retain non-exclusive, perpetual use in electronic media—in other words, your work will remain permanently on our website, where we can feature it at will.

How to query and/or contact us

The golden rule of freelancing is this: Know your publication. Spend some time with The Rake, read it, soak it up, figure out what makes us tick. Then make your proposal, with a specific idea where it might fit in the magazine.

We like seeing what you've done for other publications. But give us two or three of your best clips--not a dozen of your mediocre ones. If you have no clips, don't sweat it. Just go ahead and write something you think we'll like. (Hint: We will always be happy to read your stuff on spec.)

The best way to interact with us is by email. We find email is the most efficient way to communicate with folks who make their living on their computers. Email: cristina [at] rakemag.com. (We've spelled this out to frustrate the spammers who search the internet for email addresses to plague. You, as a human, should be able to figure it out.) We do not handle queries or submissions by mail. (If you don't have access to a computer, you are not reading this; in that case, go ahead and use snail mail.) Please allow us up to 4 weeks to get back to you. We get hundreds of queries each week and get to them as fast as we can. Thanks for your gracious understanding.

About phone calls: unless it's amazing breaking news that absoulutely can't wait, please don't. Thanks.