Looking for a Contributor to FriendlyAtheist

Me: Been writing here for a while and would love to introduce another voice or two to the interwebs…

You: A reader of this site who has a lot to say about religion/atheism/babies/etc, knows how to say it effectively, and would like to become a contributor on this site.

What’s in it for you?

The change to write for a large readership of awesome people.

Plenty of flexibility in what you talk about.

Money. Nothing crazy, but you would get paid. (Trust me, you don’t want to do this for the money. It won’t be worth it. But if you have a lot to say and think getting paid would just be a cool bonus, fantastic. In fact if you ask me about the money at all, I’m going to delete your email automatically.)

Who am I looking for?

Honestly, it’d be great to have a female voice on the site… or a student… or an expert in the law, or politics, or medicine, or the “atheist community at large”… or voices we don’t normally hear from in the blogosphere. But I’m more interested in how you write and what interests you than trying to fill a particular demographic. (Maybe that means I ask more than one of you to join.) So don’t let the beginning of this paragraph scare you away.

I’m also looking for people who can contribute on a regular basis. (I don’t know if that’s once a day or twice a week or something else… we can play it by ear.)

What do I need?

If you’re interested, send me an email letting me know why you’d like to be a contributor. Please include the following:

Your real name. (If you use a pseudonym online, this is probably not the blog for you.)

Samples of your writing. Whatever that means. Be creative. (If you have a blog already, terrific! If you’re sending me your 4-page philosophical essay on the Cosmological argument, then you never read this site, do you…?)

A list of some topics that you think you’d enjoy writing about. (Preferably things that warrant a serious conversation.)

Anything else that would be helpful to know about you.

I don’t need a resume. I just need to feel comfortable with you and have the knowledge that we’d probably work well together.

I have no idea how many people will respond to this… but if I don’t get back in touch with you, please don’t take it the wrong way! I’m hoping to figure this out sometime soon, so please get in touch by November 5^th.

Reginald Selkirk

Your real name

Hater.
Johannsone

I’ve read some great thoughts in the comment section in response to blog posts, reader q’s etc. I hope one of the regular commenters sees it as a chance to expand on their thoughts.
Mike Williams

Thanks for doing this, Hemant. There are plenty of great thinkers out there who, for whatever reason, haven’t been heard by the masses. It’s really cool that you would take your notoriety and use it to help bring exposure to those other voices.

Of course this is your ship, but perhaps it would be interesting to post a dozen or two of the ‘guest posts’ and let the readership decide who they would most like to see more of.
David C. Frier

FYI for the past week or so, FA at FA dot com has been bouncing back to me.
deityfree

Hope your email is back up.
William

Wish I had the output of posts, the attention to current events, and the writing skills. Otherwise I would have taken it, you should take guest posts, this could do something similar for people with lower outputs of posts.
Nena

I do not envy Hemant the flooding of emails he is going to receive from hacks like me in response to this post. 🙂
Tea Cosy

I wonder if he’s been buried under the deluge yet?

Also: Handbags at dawn time? Or in my case, Practical Shoulder-Bags At Dawn?
Hemant Mehta

It’s getting fixed, but I updated the post in the meantime! Thanks.
Anonymous

I wish I could do it. But between my job, my part-time other job, being president of my chorus, teaching a class at the UU, and getting my daughters to do their homework, I don’t think I could post often enough. AND – I think my boss’s boss is pretty fundamentalist, so posting under my own name is right out. Dang. I’ve been dying to start blogging, but it’s going to have to wait.
Ronald Asley

“it’d be great to have a female voice on the site”
So you are making a decision based on gender for which there is no reason to differentiate based on gender? That sounds like sexism to me.
Vanessa

Did you stop on that sentence to come complain? Hemant says a few sentences later: “But I’m more interested in how you write and what interests you than trying to fill a particular demographic.”
Anonymous

He also talked about wanting a student voice or an expert in a field. Is that discrimination as well? And, as Vanessa mentioned, he opened it up to anyone at the end of the paragraph.
TerranRich

I applied! It would be awesome to contribute to this site and not just on my blog, which hardly anybody reads. lol
Eivind

Would you consider -posting- a contribution under a pseudonym assuming *you* knew the real name of the author ? I ask ‘cos I’ve got 2 very clever atheist friends who would, I think, love to have a greater audience for their thoughts – but doing so under their real name is not an option as they’re Iranian.

There’s a death-sentence in Iran for apostasy – thus these are people who can only have a voice at all, if that voice can be allowed to be pseudonymous.
Amy Caswell

Your privilege is showing.

Offering a member of a particular group that is often under-represented in a particular community an opportunity to have a voice is not sexism. Plus, as has been noted, he said at the end of the paragraph that he’s more interested in writing style and the writer’s particular interests than in said writer’s genitalia.
Amy Caswell

Just read a couple posts at your blog. I have a contender 🙁
On the other hand, I also now have a new blog to read 🙂
Hemant Mehta

It’s possible. Have them send me something if they’re interested!
Anonymous

I would, but I’m a better speaker than writer.

Oh, and you owe me $7 for this comment, thanks.
Shannon

This is awesome. Consider my entry emailed.
William

Could you imagine if PZ did a post like this :).
Mark Panzarino

Application sent!