Americas Society and Council of the Americas (AS/COA) Submission Guidelines

Key takeaways

• AS/COA publishes through separate doors: Americas Quarterly for argument-driven essays and reported pieces, AS/COA Online for short analysis tied to news and programming, and Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas for scholarship on literature and the arts.
• Editors commission most of what runs. A 150 to 250 word pitch that states one defensible argument, a timing hook, and the evidence you already hold does better than an unsolicited full draft.
• The institution is business-facing, nonpartisan, and consistently pro-market and pro-democracy in its editorial posture. Work arguing from a different starting point can still run, but it faces a higher bar and fewer slots.
• Word counts, deadlines, payment, and rights are set per commission. Confirm them in the commissioning email before you write.

1. Introduction

Writers who want to publish with AS/COA often begin in the wrong place. They paste a finished 3,000-word essay into a general contact form, wait a month, and hear nothing. The silence usually has nothing to do with quality. It happens because Americas Society and Council of the Americas run several editorial channels, each with its own editors, formats, and standards, and a general inbox is rarely the right one.

The confusion is understandable. AS/COA describes itself as one organization with two mandates, and its public-facing work spans arts exhibitions, trade policy reports, panel discussions, a print magazine, and a scholarly journal. Submission guidelines for each of those sit in different places and change without much notice.

This guide maps the channels, explains what each editorial team needs at the pitch stage, and puts AS/COA's outlets next to peer publications in Latin American policy writing. The goal is to help you pick the right target and avoid the most common wasted cycle: a strong piece sent to an editor who never commissions that kind of work.

2. How AS/COA is organized, and which channel fits your work

Americas Society and Council of the Americas share a president, a staff, and a headquarters in New York. Americas Society, founded in 1965, runs programs in the arts, literature, and education. Council of the Americas, also founded in 1965 and administered alongside it, works on trade, investment, and hemispheric policy, and draws its membership largely from companies operating in the region.

That dual structure determines who reads what.

Two practical rules follow from this map. If your draft is a survey of a subject with no claim attached, the online desk is a better fit than Americas Quarterly, which buys arguments. If your work carries footnotes, archival sources, and a literature review, the journal route fits better than a magazine pitch, because the two processes have different timelines and different definitions of evidence.

3. Pitching Americas Quarterly

Americas Quarterly is the highest-reach channel inside AS/COA and the most competitive. It publishes in English for readers who follow the region closely but who do not specialize in your field: executives with operations in three countries, diplomats, journalists, and academics who read outside their discipline. The magazine organizes many issues around a theme, which means the calendar matters as much as the topic.

A pitch that works carries five elements in under 250 words:

1. A subject line that states the argument, not the topic.
2. One paragraph naming the claim and what it challenges or adds.
3. One paragraph on timing: a vote, a court ruling, an election date, a regulation taking effect, an anniversary with new data behind it.
4. One paragraph on evidence and access, including what you can obtain that a generalist cannot.
5. A one-line bio and two or three links to prior published work.

Pitches that fail tend to describe a subject instead of making a claim. A good test: if the editor cannot restate your argument in a single sentence, it will not be commissioned. Region-wide framing ("Latin America needs a new social contract") reads as commentary rather than analysis, and AQ's editors see hundreds of versions of it.

Disclose prior publication in the first line. Editors treat first publication in English as part of what they are buying, and a piece that already ran in Spanish or Portuguese changes the deal. Translations and adaptations do appear, but the arrangement is the editor's call and has to be settled before you write, not after.

Ask about payment, rights, and length when the commission arrives. Contracts and rates sit with the publisher, and the details vary by piece type. Filing twice the assigned length, or a draft that ignores the assigned angle, is the most common reason a commission turns into a stalled edit.

4. Writing for AS/COA Online, events, and the journal route

AS/COA Online moves faster than the magazine and publishes shorter pieces tied to something on the calendar: an election result, a central bank decision, a trade round, a summit, or an event the organization is hosting. Turnaround runs from days to a couple of weeks, and the writing needs to be plain enough for a reader skimming on a phone.

The realistic path into that channel starts with the programming. Speakers, panelists, and members who appear at AS/COA events already have a relationship with the program staff who commission written follow-ups. If you present on a panel, offer a short written version of your remarks while the topic is still current. Cold drafts sent to a general inbox rarely get read, because the desk works from a commissioning list rather than an open submission pile.

For humanities scholars, Americas Society oversees review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, a journal covering Latin American literature, arts, and criticism, including translations. Submissions follow academic conventions: proposal or abstract, manuscript, citations, and editorial review, with timelines measured in months. This route suits doctoral candidates, translators, and established critics. A trade policy essay sent there will not find a home.

5. How AS/COA's channels compare with peer outlets

Choosing an outlet is a career decision as much as an editorial one. The table below compares AS/COA's channels with publications that cover similar ground, including where each one is weak and which authors it serves.

Time-sensitive work belongs in the faster channels. A piece about a bill moving through congress has a shelf life of weeks, and a quarterly magazine's production schedule will outlast it. Theoretical work can wait for a journal. Where your argument sits between those poles tells you more about the right outlet than prestige rankings do.

6. FAQ

Q1. Does AS/COA accept unsolicited pitches?

Americas Quarterly reads pitches that arrive through the channel listed on the magazine's site, so unsolicited submissions are part of its normal workflow. AS/COA Online commissions most content from people already connected to its programming, and drafts sent cold to a general address often go unanswered. The journal route runs through its own editorial process rather than a magazine pitch.

Q2. Can I submit a piece that already ran in Spanish or Portuguese?

Disclose it in the first line of the pitch. Editors treat first publication in English as part of what they are acquiring, and prior publication in another language changes the terms. Translated and adapted work does appear in AS/COA's channels, but the editor decides whether the piece still has value for an English-reading audience.

Q3. How long should an Americas Quarterly essay be?

The editor sets the length at commission. An online essay and a print feature are different products with different space constraints, so ask for the target range and the deadline in writing. Filing at twice the assigned length is one of the few mistakes that reliably damages a first commission.

Q4. Do I need to be based in Latin America?

No. AQ publishes authors from the region and from outside it. What counts is access to evidence: data, interviews, documents, or operational experience that someone else cannot assemble quickly. Regional residency helps with sourcing and timing, and it is not a formal requirement.

7. Conclusion

For most authors, the sequence is straightforward. Pitch Americas Quarterly when you hold a dated argument and the evidence to support it, because that combination is what the magazine's editors are looking for and what its readership rewards. Use AS/COA Online when your material is timely and shorter, and accept that the reach is smaller in exchange for a faster decision and a relationship with the institution. Send literary and arts scholarship to Review, which runs on academic timelines.

Before any of that, read two or three recent issues of the target publication and note how the mix of essays, interviews, and data pieces shifts from issue to issue. A pitch that echoes the structure of something the outlet already published reads as a fit. A pitch that ignores it reads as a mass mailing.