How to Earn $200 for Your Personal Essay on Food Insecurity

We will publish up to 10 essays by writers currently experiencing food insecurity

Updated December 13, 2025: Due to the influx of interest in this topic, we are now publishing up to 10 essays in this series. Deadline for submissions is December 31, 2025. We are receiving a large number of submissions that don’t fit our guidelines (pitches instead of full drafts, AI slop instead of deeply personal essays, etc.). We will close this call early if that trend continues, so please follow our guidelines. Check this post to ensure these guidelines are still active.

In light of the current cuts to SNAP funding that started November 1, 2025 in the United States, Open Secrets Magazine is issuing this call for submissions for personal essays by and about people currently experiencing food insecurity. We will pay $200/essay and publish up to 10 essays. We will accept submissions through December 31, 2025. Any updates to this call for submissions will be made in this post. If you’re seeing our guidelines below, the call is still open.

We pay upon finalization of the text between author and editor. Once all essays have been commissioned, this call will be closed and updated, so earlier submissions are encouraged.

Deadline: December 31, 2025

Open Secrets Magazine is seeking original, unpublished, non-AI-generated 1,000-2,500 word personal essays on the author’s current personal experience with food insecurity to be published in our Finances section. Priority will be given to those writing about their current experience related to food insecurity and SNAP benefits in the United States, but we are open to submissions from anywhere in the world on the topic and essays by U.S. authors unrelated to SNAP benefits. We don’t consider pitches, only full essay drafts submitted according to our guidelines.

We want to showcase the human sides of modern food insecurity and intend to publish essays by writers from a range of backgrounds, locations, races, genders, sexual orientations, and ages. Like all Open Secrets essays, your essay should have a strong voice and point of view, and share a complete and compelling story with a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Suggested topics: Tell us about the impact of food insecurity on a specific aspect of your life. How does it affect your family and friend relationships, your career (if applicable), your mental and physical health, your identity, your housing situation, your daily activities? What’s your history with food insecurity and how does that play a role in your current experience? How have recent governmental policies, such as cuts to SNAP benefits, impacted your access to food? We want specific, deeply personal stories, not generalities, abstractions, or vague, overly broad statements.

See examples of our food insecurity essays to get a sense of the work we publish:

“The High Cost of Being Poor” by Tajah McQueen

“The Exhausting Mathematics of Hunger While Receiving SNAP” by Lara McKusky

We don’t publish data-heavy pieces or op-eds, though if there are a few relevant statistics, you can embed the links within your essay. The heart of our essays is our authors’ personal stories about all the subjects we’re taught to keep “secret” and that will be the focus of these food insecurity essays as well.

Essays must be written entirely by the author; we don’t publish essays written using any form of artificial intelligence. See this post for more details about what that means.

We don’t accept essays that have been published, in whole or in part, online or in print. This includes blogs, Substack posts, newsletters, newspapers, magazines, or anywhere else. If any part of your essay has already appeared elsewhere, we will not consider it. The essay must remain exclusive to Open Secrets prior to publication.

We will publish these essays in our Finances section. Only 1 food insecurity submission per author will be considered. We can only respond to submissions we are interested in publishing. If you haven’t heard back within 2 weeks of submission, we aren’t able to publish your food insecurity essay. We don’t accept queries, only completed essays submitted according to the instructions below.

We especially welcome submissions from our subscribers for this section but you don’t have to be an Open Secrets subscriber to submit a food insecurity essay, though you should be familiar with tone of the essays we publish.

Check this page before submitting to ensure this call for submissions is still open.

How to submit your food insecurity personal essay

Submissions must include all 3 required elements: Essay, bio, and horizontal photo or free Unsplash horizontal stock photo URL. Submit all 3 to opensecretsmag@gmail.com with “Food Insecurity submission” in subject line.

Include an original, unpublished 1,000-2,500 word essay with a proposed headline and subhed (1-line tagline) with a third-person, 100-word maximum bio at the end of your essay as a Word doc, RTF, or in the body of your email. Google Docs will not be considered. If you’re using a pseudonym, let us know in your submission and provide a bio for the pseudonym. Use Times New Roman 12 point font, single spacing with one line between paragraphs. You MUST ALSO include either an original horizontal photo of you or related to your essay topic that you own the rights to (with photo credit if you weren’t the photographer) or a URL linking to a free horizontal Unsplash.com stock photo related to the essay topic. Do not include photos in your Word document.

Open Secrets may, with the author’s approval, suggest edits to your headline, subhed, essay, and photo, all of which will be approved by the author before publication.

Those submitting a food insecurity essay may also submit to our other categories according to our guidelines.

Payment: $200 upon finalization of the text, via Venmo, Zelle, or PayPal. Authors retain all rights to their work.

Deadline: ASAP; this section of our call for submissions will close once we’ve commissioned 10 essays.

When you’ll hear back from us: If we are interested in publishing your food insecurity essay, we will respond within 2 weeks of submission. If you don’t hear from us within 2 weeks, we were unable to publish your essay.

For questions that aren’t answered above: opensecretsmag@gmail.com (we will do our best to answer but can’t guarantee a reply)