Personal essays, lived experience and creative work about disability, chronic illness and neurodivergent life.

Got a disability or chronic illness story that made you laugh, cringe, swear, rethink something or wish the floor would swallow you whole?

We'd like to hear it.

URevolution Magazine accepts pitches and submissions about disability, chronic illness and neurodivergent life, with particular interest in first-person work from people living those experiences themselves.

We're interested in the stuff that tends to disappear from polished narratives about disability: dating disasters, inaccessible workplaces, medical disbelief, sex, friendship, family, bodies, pain, fatigue, mobility aids, diagnosis, identity, bureaucracy, joy, grief and the spectacularly strange things people sometimes say when disability enters the conversation.

View our current submission opportunity

What does URevolution publish?

URevolution is an independent disability-led publication. Disability and chronic illness are central to what we do.

Our Magazine covers lived experience and useful editorial work across:

Disability culture and identity

Chronic illness

Invisible disability

Neurodivergence

Healthcare and medical power

Work and disability

Relationships, sex and family

Accessibility and everyday life

Race, gender, sexuality, mental health and other identities belong in that conversation when they genuinely change the disability or chronic-illness experience.

We aren't looking for generic DEI articles with disability added as an afterthought.

Browse URevolution Magazine

The stories we particularly want

A diagnosis isn't automatically a story. What happened because of it often is.

Maybe yours is about:

The conversation you actually had, or the one you never managed to have.

Deciding whether to disclose a disability at work.

Dating while disabled or chronically ill.

Sex, intimacy or the assumptions people make about disabled bodies.

The doctor who didn't believe you.

Waiting years for a diagnosis.

Being told you “don't look disabled.”

Friendship changing after illness.

Family, partners, parenting or caregiving.

Mobility aids and how people suddenly treat you differently.

Navigating work with pain, fatigue or fluctuating capacity.

Access failures that would be funny if they weren't so ridiculous.

Identity after diagnosis or becoming disabled.

Something nobody seems willing to say out loud.

Specific beats generic.

“Here's what happened when I disclosed my disability during a job interview” will usually interest us more than “Five Things Employers Should Know About Disability.”

“Here's the bizarre thing somebody said to me on a date” beats another broad explanation of disability etiquette.

Tell us what happened. Then tell us why it matters.

What can I submit?

Depending on the current submission project, we consider:

Personal essays and first-person stories

Reflective or reported work grounded in lived experience

Commentary

Creative nonfiction

Fiction where disability or chronic illness is materially central

Photo essays

Comics, cartoons and illustration

Animation

Video

Audio

For written personal stories, we're usually looking for 500–2,500 words.

You can pitch an idea before writing the complete article. Finished drafts are welcome too.

Read the current call and submit your pitch

Who can submit?

We particularly want to hear directly from disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent people.

You don't need a particular diagnosis. You don't need to “look disabled.” And unless a particular story depends on diagnosis, we're not interested in policing whether somebody has accumulated enough medical paperwork to qualify for a voice.

Partners, family members and caregivers can also pitch when their own experience is genuinely the subject of the story. We don't want narratives that speak over a disabled person or turn somebody else's disability into a character-development exercise.

At the moment, we can only review submissions written in English.

You don't have to be a professional writer

We're looking for a strong story and a distinctive voice, not an immaculate literary résumé.

Your work should be readable and reasonably polished when you send it. We may edit accepted work for clarity, structure, accuracy, accessibility and house style while trying to preserve the contributor's own voice.

We cannot guarantee extensive developmental rewriting of every submission.

Never published anything before? That doesn't disqualify you.

What we're not looking for

Please don't send us:

Medical, clinical, pharmaceutical or nutritional advice

Generic health or wellness articles

Promotional articles for a business, product or service

SEO content disguised as a personal essay

Work where disability or chronic illness is incidental rather than genuinely relevant

Disability-as-tragedy or disability-as-inspiration stories written primarily for nondisabled readers

Discriminatory or hateful material

Work you didn't create or don't have permission to submit

Poetry through our current personal-story submission call

We also don't need you to manufacture suffering. Disability stories can be angry, funny, horny, boring, joyful, petty, complicated or completely absurd.

People contain multitudes. Disabled people included.

What does a strong URevolution story look like?

There isn't one formula.

Here are a few examples showing the range we're interested in.

Dating, disability and being treated like a novelty

In Are You Thinking About Dating a Woman in a Wheelchair?, Glorianne Rivera-Casanova writes about dating, disability and the men who can make the whole thing very weird indeed.

https://www.urevolution.com/blogs/magazine/dating-disabled-woman

Living with chronic pain

In Personal Essay on Pain: The Lesser Evil, Shannon Cassidy writes about pain as a constant companion rather than turning chronic illness into a neat story about overcoming adversity.

https://www.urevolution.com/blogs/magazine/essay-on-pain-is-my-friend

When the healthcare system doesn't know your condition

In A Hospital Experience With a Rare Chronic Illness: A Letter to Physicians, Emily Hendricks Jensen addresses doctors directly about the experience of seeking treatment for a rare chronic illness.

https://www.urevolution.com/blogs/magazine/hospital-experience-with-a-rare-chronic-illness

Different subjects. Different voices. That's the point.

Do you pay contributors?

We aren't currently able to pay contributors for personal stories. There is no fee to submit.

We'd rather state that plainly before you spend time pitching us.

If we introduce paid commissions or a submission project with different terms, we'll state the payment clearly in that call.

What happens if URevolution accepts my story?

If we want to move forward, we'll contact you about the next steps.

Depending on the piece, we may ask for:

A completed or revised manuscript

A short third-person author bio

An author photograph, if you'd like one displayed

Links to your website or social profiles

Sources for factual or medical claims

Permission information for photographs, artwork, audio or video

Publication may involve editing for clarity, structure, factual accuracy, accessibility and URevolution house style. We won't knowingly invent experiences, quotations or details and pass them off as yours.

Can I use a pseudonym?

Yes.

If you need or prefer to publish under a pseudonym, use the name you want displayed publicly and tell us privately that it is a pseudonym.

We understand that people write about work, healthcare, relationships, sexuality, mental health and family circumstances that they may not want attached to their legal name.

What about previously published work?

If a piece has appeared elsewhere, tell us where and when when you submit it.

Don't submit work you don't control or material that URevolution cannot legally republish.

If you're unsure whether a particular previously published piece is suitable, explain the circumstances in your pitch rather than quietly omitting them.

What rights does URevolution take?

If we accept your work, any publication rights and permissions should be confirmed with you before publication.

Submitting a pitch does not transfer ownership of your work to URevolution.

Can I submit using AI-generated writing?

Your story needs to be yours.

Writing tools may help with spelling, grammar or editing, but don't send us fabricated first-person experience, invented quotations, fake interviews or AI-generated “lived experience.”

If you're submitting a personal essay, the life being described should have been lived by an actual person.

Is the submission process accessible?

We use Submittable to manage submissions.

If the submission platform itself creates an accessibility barrier that prevents you from pitching us, contact URevolution:

https://www.urevolution.com/pages/contact-us

Ready to pitch us?

Read the current call before submitting. It contains the specific requirements for that submission project.

Submit a disability or chronic illness story:

Not sure yet?

Browse URevolution Magazine and see whether your story feels at home here:

https://www.urevolution.com/blogs/magazine

You don't need to make disability palatable, inspirational or tidy. Tell us what actually happened.