The Margins seeks pitches and submissions to Open City, its journalism section devoted to chronicling the pulse of Asian America. Through articles, features, interviews, and profiles, Open City covers Asian immigrant and Muslim communities with an emphasis on social, racial, and gender justice issues.

While Open City previously focused on the lived stories of Asian communities in the boroughs of New York City, we are now eager to accept pitches about communities in cities and towns all over the United States. We also welcome internationally reported stories.

We are looking for shoeleather reporting, hybrid essays, personality and place profiles, features, narrative storytelling, and more. 

We pay all writers and translators. Please refer to our rate sheet for more details.

Send your pitch of no more than 500 words to opencity@aaww.org. Write “Pitch” or “Submission” in the email subject line. If you can, add a headline to the subject line. Do not submit multiple pitches or pieces.

All pitches should include a:

• Short summary of your proposed story
• Rationale for why this story is important and relevant to Asian American and Muslim American communities
• Reporting plan and timeline
• List of sources and/or references
• Short bio
• Links to clips

Pitches and pieces must be your original work, authored or written solely by you, and may not include material generated by AI.

We encourage interested contributors to explore Open City for ideas on the kind of stories that we publish. Here are some examples:

• Pieces with a strong sense of social justice. e.g., “What It’s Like to Live in the Country That’s Bombing Your Own” by Sumaya Awad
• Pieces that depict the face, name, place, and heart of a community. e.g., “These Streets are Ours Too: Arab Women Rise” by Humera Afridi
• Voice-driven stories. e.g., “A Stranger in Our Midst” by Chaya Babu
• Pieces that focus on community issues. e.g., “Is This What We Consider a Good Education?” by Hannah Bae
• Narrative-driven feature reportage. e.g., “We’re Not Just Protecting the Community, but Also Each Other” by Teresa Mathew
• Oral histories. e.g., “We Were Not Allowed to Mourn” by Lylla Younes
• Local histories. e.g., “The First Chinatown on the East Coast” by April Xu
• Personal histories. e.g., “The Little Brown Brother’s Burden” by Vina Orden
• First-person accounts. e.g., “From Prison Chaplain to Imprisoned Chaplain” by April Xu
• Culture pieces. e.g., “Leftover Women” by Yichen Tu
• Profiles. e.g., “Dragon Ladies” by Mike Hong
• How-to features. e.g., “How to Start Your Family Roots Search” by River 瑩瑩 Dandelion
• Background stories. e.g., “Six Years of Spying on Muslim Americans” by Sowmiya Ashok