Submit!

The submission period for the 2025 issue is now open!

To submit your work for Tortoise, see the instructions below:

Tortoise invites undergraduate students and graduate students currently affiliated with Princeton University to submit their academic writing for consideration to be published in Tortoise. We solicit academic writing from all disciplines – the humanities, the social sciences, the natural sciences and engineering – and publish excerpts along with reflective commentary about the writing process. Our goal is not only to share student writing with a wider audience, but also to demonstrate how it works.

2025 Issue Submission Deadlines

The Tortoise editorial board conducts a first round of review of submissions in early January. The early action deadline for the 2025 issue is Sunday, January 5 at 11:59 p.m.

The editorial board will then accept additional submissions for the Spring 2025 issue on a rolling basis, through the final submission deadline, which is Sunday, January 19 at 11:59 p.m.

How to Submit

Submit your work for the Spring 2025 issue of Tortoise!

You’ll be asked to provide the following:

• Your name, netID, and class year
• The course/project for which the paper was written
• A brief note highlighting what you consider to be the most successful element of your piece and why
• Your submission, uploaded as a Word document with all identifying information removed (such as your name, your instructor’s name, and the course title)

There is no word or page count limit. Most essays selected for publication will be excerpted to showcase a specific element.

Additionally, an author may submit as many essays as they wish, as long as they were written during their academic career at Princeton.

To get a sense of the kinds of essays that have been published in the past, please refer to articles published in our previous issues. The editorial staff considers all submitted essays through a blind review process.

If you have questions, please write to us at wcjournal@princeton.edu.