Write for This Machine Press, Sixteen Tons & a Guitar

Bring something that still burns after the music stops.

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

This Machine Press, Sixteen Tons & a Guitar was built where work songs meet protest hymns.

Music lives here.

So do labor, resistance, memory, identity, literature, culture, and the things human beings create when the world gives them something worth screaming about.

This publication already has a simple description:

Essays, stories, and noise from writers who still give a damn.

Now I’m looking for more of them.

What I’m Looking For

I’m interested in:

• music criticism
• album essays
• artist retrospectives
• music history
• protest music
• labor and working-class culture
• counterculture
• literature
• identity
• personal essays built around music
• cultural criticism
• stories about the relationship between art and resistance

You don’t need to tell me whether an album is a 7.5 or an 8.

Tell me why somebody was still listening to it twenty years later.

Tell me what that guitar meant.

Tell me why the scream mattered.

Tell me what was happening outside the studio when the record was being made.

Voice Matters Here

Polished doesn’t have to mean bloodless.

You can swear.

You can be angry.

You can be funny.

You can be vulnerable.

Just mean it.

How to Submit

Submit completed Medium drafts through the publication.

Questions and pitches can come directly to:

**annabellettiereeditor@gmail.com**

Editing and Scheduling

I’ll edit when editing makes the story stronger.

I won’t polish away the reason I wanted the story in the first place.

Once it’s ready, tell me when you’d like it published. Unless there’s a genuine conflict or Medium’s publishing limits interfere, I’ll try to give you the date you want.

Turn It Up

I know what music sounds like through my ears.

I know what work, anger, memory, resistance, and joy sound like through my experiences.

I don’t know what they sound like through yours.

That’s why I’m opening the door.

Turn it up.