Send all submissions toxpatsubmissions@xpatmag.com

Xpat is a magazine by and for foreigners in Taiwan. We want to echo the voice of the expatriate community. We want to know your feelings about issues (both personal and political) affecting xpats. We want to know if the rancid open sewer system here makes you want to retch up your esophagus or if it makes you homesick for Milwaukee. We want to know if beetle-nut girls have you spitting a majestic hue of maroon or if they’re a violent affront to your delicate, politically correct sensibilities. We want the voice of the content xpat, the bitter xpat, the intelligent xpat, the slacker xpat, the depressed xpat, and the culture-shocked xpat. We want the xpat experience.

THEMES

Xpat is a theme-based magazine. Ever issue has one idea that ties all the content together. Your piece does not need to be directly related to the theme of the issue, but it must be related in some way. We prefer work that takes an original or suprising approach to the issue's theme.

You can submit work not related to any theme for publication on our website and for use in future issues. Our choice of theme is determined partly by the articles that we already have.

NEW JOURNALISM

Xpat, in literary terms, is a progressive magazine. We subscribe to the idea that objectivity is a boring and worthless pursuit. If people want facts they’ll read the Taipei Times or the BBC. People read Xpat for intelligent and entertaining perspectives and stories about issues relevant to their lives.

Xpat’s style is based largely on ideas from the school of New Journalism. New Journalism places the author, rather than the subject, at the center of the story. New Journalists immerse themselves in research and write the story of their experience. Authors sometimes even include fictionalized events to emphasize the their involvement in the story.

These stories range from personal accounts of emotions and ideas raised in the author from contact with the subject, to the story of how the author struggled to meet an impossible deadline, to balls-to-the-wall Thompson style gonzo journalism that tells a story with little or no connection to the original article. We accept all these forms, but all articles don’t need to be written in this style. There are many sections in the Xpat that by definition cannot be written this way. What we do require is personality. We want to hear you.

For some outstanding examples of New Journalism check out: Tom Wolfe’s The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Right Stuff, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night, and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

Hunter S. Thompson created Gonzo Journalism as an offshoot of New Journalism. For good examples of Gonzo Journalism check out www.viceland.com or read Thompson’s The Curse of Lono, The Great Shark Hunt, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

FACTUALITY

That being said, creativity is not a license to make up facts and present them as credible information. All information presented as factual in your story must have a credible source and you had better be able to produce it if we ask for it; otherwise we can’t publish you. It takes but one libel suit to destroy a magazine.

ORIGINALITY

We don’t want clichés. If you send us a piece about why beetle nut girls offend you DON’T pull out your Women’s Studies 202 textbook and drivel out the same old rant about patriarchy, objectification, and the horrors of treating women as objects that we’ve heard since the eighties. Give us something original. Give us your reaction or story related to the issue.

There are few stories that haven’t already been told. Chances are somebody’s already said what you want to say—it’s your take on it that makes it unique.

VOICE

We want a casual voice. Our readership consists mainly of educated, international-minded, 25 to 35 year olds. We’re all peers here, so talk us that way. Slang, profanities, and colloquialisms are fine so long as they’re not excessive or hard to understand. Give us the voice you use to tell your buddy about your new boyfriend, that massive beach party last weekend, or the article you read in the Economist that got you thinking about the political significance of tofu.

Give us a strong voice. Confidence makes people listen. If you think that Taiwanese drivers are, as one post to a local bulletin board claimed, (I’m paraphrasing here) “poorly trained monkeys in need of a severe beating,” then say it. It’s not nice. Apparently neither is the author. But it is interesting. Even if I hate this guy I’m gonna keep reading ‘cause I want to know what else this sociopathic wing-nut has to say. Don’t be a sissy. Make a statement.

POLITICS

Everybody’s got an agenda, but this magazine doesn’t. We think free speech is so sweet that we’ll publish anything with merit. Even if we loathe them, we’ll publish your simple-minded opinions about the road skills of our host country people so long as they’re well written and entertaining. Just don’t be upset when we publish reactionary articles and letters in the next issue by people who think you’re a mongoloid bigot.

HUMOR

Sarcasm, wit, parody, satire, irony, cynicism, mockery, bitterness, facetiousness, and all other forms of levity are fully encouraged and will be rewarded with instantaneous publication and a harem in the afterlife.

Send all submissions toxpatsubmissions@xpatmag.com