Submission Guidelines for lamjai.in

Unfiltered voices. Crucial stories. Lamjai.in delivers essential discourse from Assam, the Northeast, and the wider East.

The door is open for contributors! We are actively seeking voices that challenge, illuminate, and deepen the understanding of this vital and diverse region. lamjai.in is a new regional webzine built on contributions from independent journalists, scholars, writers, researchers, thinkers, and artists. We are always interested in hearing from new voices who can offer perspectives we haven’t encountered before.

What We Publish

We are not a news service. We seek rigorous, reflective, and often regional journalism, combining in-depth analysis with creative expression. We are looking for stories that show the interconnectedness of issues across our region, as well as very localized stories told with a larger impact in mind. Our content includes Long-form Reportage, Political Analysis, Essays, Opinion, Interviews, Profiles, Fiction, Poetry, Photo Essays, and Artwork. We welcome writing in English and regional languages like Assamese, Karbi, and Bodo to truly reflect the region’s diversity.

We are interested in stories we don’t yet know—and new ways of looking at old stories—as long as they are explored thoughtfully and in depth. Your pieces must be accessible; our readership is diverse, so articles should engage specialists but also inform non-specialists and general readers. Furthermore, don’t be constrained by the serious pieces already on the site; we encourage ‘meaningless’ contributions that explore joy, absurdity, and the non-obvious. What we generally DO NOT publish are standard news or feature stories (the kind found in daily newspapers), writing dense in academic jargon meant for a niche audience, and Plagiarized or AI-Generated Content (see our specific policy below).

Pitching Your Idea

We invite writers to pitch ideas via email at talk@lamjai.in or through our Contact Page. We discourage one-line pitches; you must tell us why we should be interested in the article you are proposing. Pitches should be 300-600 words and must introduce the proposed article, its main arguments or narrative, and a tentative outline. Please send links (no more than three) to your previously published articles or writing samples, especially any examples of long-form writing. Writers submitting completed articles may attach the draft as a Word document.

Regarding length, we rarely publish articles shorter than 1200 words, with most articles ranging between 2000 and 4000 words. We occasionally publish pieces that exceed 4000 words, but only if the content fully justifies the length. While we do accept pieces that have been submitted simultaneously to other publications, you must alert us to this while pitching. If a piece is accepted for publication by lamjai.in, it must be immediately withdrawn from all other publications.

Editorial Process

We are a small team, and while we try to inform you of all publishing decisions, please be patient. If you do not hear from us within two weeks of sending in your pitch, please assume that we will not be taking it on. Once a piece is submitted, please send your drafts as Word documents—not PDFs or Google Docs links. Our editorial process is rigorous. We focus on strengthening the argument, clarifying the structure, and ensuring the piece is as strong as possible, and all substantive changes are referred back to the writer at each stage. Every article is fact-checked as a matter of rigour (not mistrust!) and proofed before publication. The answer to “When is it coming out?” is—when we feel it will work. Our publication schedule is often planned weeks in advance, so articles that are limited by news-related deadlines are probably not suitable for us.

Plagiarism and AI-Generated Content Policy

lamjai.in is dedicated to bold, original journalism and analysis. We follow a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism and AI-generated content. We define plagiarism as using another individual’s work without proper attribution or consent. This includes: using material from external sources without credit, reusing prose from any other published or unpublished work (including your own prior work) without due acknowledgement, and presenting any work translated from another language as your own without acknowledgment. Crucially, this also includes using AI chatbots, writing tools, or auto-generative systems to produce content or analysis. All submissions will be run through automatic plagiarism checkers and AI-content detectors, and manually fact-checked prior to publication.