A Recap of How to Pitch PROVOKEDmagazine: Inside My NYU Editor-on-Call with Susan Dabbar

Intel on how to get published now if you missed the event

If you missed this Editor-on-Call, here’s your update. Don’t miss the next one.

Welcome to all my recent subscribers. I’m so glad you’re here.

Many of you have found me through my book Writing That Gets Noticed, my podcast Freelance Writing Direct, my TEDx Talk, or my classes and webinars through NYU and Writer’s Digest. One of the things I love most is giving you direct access to editors so you can understand not just what works, but how decisions are actually made in real time. My greatest joy is to demystify the publishing process.

In my latest Editor-on-Call, I spoke with Susan Dabbar, founder and editor-in-chief of PROVOKED.

Susan Dabbar, editor-in-chief of PROVOKED

This conversation took place as part of a virtual Editor-on-Call event I hosted at NYU’s School of Professional Studies—see my new Fall class Pitch to Publish. The insights Susan shared were too good not to bring directly to you here.

Susan Dabbar is the founder and editor-in-chief of PROVOKED — a publication she launched at 65, bootstrapped from scratch, and built to over 30,000 subscribers in fifteen months. Her mission is sharp and personal.

“Aging isn’t the enemy. Erasure is.” — Susan Dabbar

What follows are the key moments from our conversation, and my Estelle’s Edge on them.

I also offer an opportunity for a pitch review for PROVOKED or elsewhere to paid subscribers.

On what PROVOKED is and who it’s for

Susan started PROVOKED because she looked around at the media landscape and didn’t see herself or her peers reflected anywhere. The seven sisters — McCall’s, Women’s Day, Self — are gone or going. What remains doesn’t speak to women who are vibrant, opinionated, and nowhere near done.

So she built it herself. She wanted a publication that was sharp, personal, and unafraid. When she put out her first call for writers, her opening line was: “Imagine if the Bustle, Slate, and The Atlantic had a threesome. That’s the writer I’m looking for.”

And for the overall tone? “Anne Lamott goes to brunch with Fran Leibowitz and they bring a flask. Two gals talking about where they’ve been and where they still want to go — and they’re not holding back.”

On Voice

Susan is crystal clear: without voice, you disappear.

She’s looking for writing that provokes: that pokes at culture, at the patriarchy, at assumptions. But she was quick to clarify that voice doesn’t mean loud. One of her early writers, she said, “whispers. But she’s voicey still.”

Estelle’s Edge: Voice is not style. Style is something you can imitate (Stephen King used to try on different writing styles when he was first starting out as a writer). Voice is what’s left when you stop trying to sound like a writer. If your draft could have been written by anyone else, it needs more of you in it. More specific details. More of a genuine reaction.

On what makes a strong opening

Susan came to editing through fifteen years in college admissions, reading thousands of Common App essays for competitive schools. That experience shaped how fast she makes decisions about writing. She gives a piece three sentences. If she’s not in it by then, she’s gone. She doesn’t want setup, context, or explanation. She wants to be dropped directly into the action, the ache, the question, already in motion.

Estelle’s Edge: Think of your first line as a door the reader walks through, not a hallway that leads to one. If you find yourself writing “I sat down in the chair” or “I sipped my coffee as I looked out the window,” or “It was an ordinary Tuesday,” that’s your sign to keep scrolling until you find the real beginning.

On what she’s actually looking for in a pitch

Susan returns to two questions for every piece:

“Why does it matter to women? And most importantly, why does it matter right now?”

She wants essays braided with cultural context. She doesn’t just want personal stories, she wants personal stories that connect to something larger. “The essay always starts with a woman’s specific truth. But at the end, I want every woman nodding and saying, oh yeah. I gotta text this to my daughter, or my bestie, because I really feel this.”

Estelle’s Edge: This is what separates a diary entry from a published essay. Ask yourself: “So What? What is the reader supposed to walk away thinking, feeling, or questioning? The “So What” doesn’t have to be a grand statement, but it has to exist, and it has to be felt.

On structure and arc

Susan wants movement across time: a then, a now, and a sense of what shifted between them. She’s not asking for tidy resolution. In fact she prefers essays that don’t wrap up cleanly. But the reader needs to feel that something has changed: some understanding, some awareness, some hard-won perspective. An essay about something that happened twenty years ago has to arrive somewhere in the present: what you know now, what you’d pass on, how you’ve moved through it.

Estelle’s Edge: The essay should show some evolution. I call it leaving a gift for the reader in my writing book. If your piece is all then and no now, it’s an anecdote. If it’s all now and no then, it’s an opinion piece. The essay needs both, and the movement between them. That distance is where the essay lives.

On endings

Susan is emphatic: don’t resolve it. Don’t over-explain. Don’t summarize. She wants endings that leave the reader still thinking, still turning the piece over, still sitting with something unresolved. When I mentioned my concept of writing past the end of the essay, she immediately connected with it…that lasting power of a piece that stays with you long after you’ve closed the page.

Estelle’s Edge: Read your last paragraph and ask: Am I landing the ending, or am I explaining or summarizing? I call it the schoolyard “In Conclusion” type of ending.

On structure: braiding

This was one of Susan’s most passionate points. She doesn’t want essays that move in blocks: personal story, then service, then reflection, then back again. That kind of segmented structure kills momentum. What she wants is for those elements to be woven together so tightly the reader can’t see the seams. Her piece Landman’s Woman: A Real Oil Man’s Wife Responds was her example: a hot TV show braided with her personal experience as an oil wife, delivering what she calls service, not the listicle kind, but the kind that makes a reader stop and recognize something true.

Estelle’s Edge: If you want to hear a masterclass in braiding, listen to my recent podcast episode with Kerry Docherty, author of Selfish, on Freelance Writing Direct: Reclaiming “Selfish”: On Craft, Creativity, and Braiding Truth into Memoir.

On titles

Titles matter more than most writers think. Susan reads them as a signal of confidence and clarity: a strong title tells her the writer knows exactly what the piece is about and isn't circling the idea. A weak or vague title means she has to go searching for the angle herself, and that's already a problem. Titles can change in editing, but the working title you submit tells her how you think.

Estelle’s Edge: If you’re struggling to title it, that can be a sign the angle isn’t sharp enough yet. Try writing ten possible titles before you submit, and try using active verbs. The process will clarify what the piece is actually about.

On what she wants more of

Humor is at the top of her list: “who doesn’t want something smart and funny?” She also wants travel pieces, but only with a real hook. “Traveling solo to Portugal — I’ve been pitched that eight times. When you Google it, there are 500 articles. That’s not a hook anymore.”

She also wants more cultural hot takes. The kind where a writer hits her inbox on a Sunday morning and says, “I got this.”

On platform

Susan doesn’t look at follower counts or social media presence when evaluating a piece. She pulls writers from unexpected places based purely on voice. Some of PROVOKED’s best performing pieces have come from writers with no platform at all. The story is the credential.

On what writers should be writing about

Susan had a pointed answer to writers who are still searching for their subject: “The thing you’re afraid of is probably the best thing you could be writing about.”

Writers tend to avoid the material that feels most exposed or uncertain. But that’s often where the depth is. That’s where the writing gets honest.

Estelle’s Edge: When you notice yourself circling a topic, softening it, or deciding it’s “too personal,” pay attention. That discomfort is often pointing directly at the story only you can tell. You don’t have to share everything, but you do have to be willing to go toward what scares you, even a little. That’s where the writing gets real. I’ve written about this before on this site: On Craft, Revision, And the Paragraph You Almost Cut.

How can someone break in?

Susan described two main paths.

The first is joining her masthead as a regular contributor. She's always looking, and she pulls writers from unexpected places, including directly from Substack, based purely on voice. The second, and more accessible entry point, is Dear Reader — personal essays of 800–1,000 words that read like one chapter of a memoir. She receives ten to twenty-five submissions a week and typically publishes two or three. A piece that makes the cut goes into the Thursday newsletter to 30,000+ subscribers that same week. As she put it, an essay published today reaches more people tomorrow morning than a memoir might reach in its entire first year.

Susan has also put together a detailed pitching guide — one of the most direct and useful documents I've seen from any editor. Download it here.

To get a feel for the publication before you pitch, read some of their standout pieces: The Truth About Fancy Salt, Cerulean Is Back: Miranda Priestly Was Almost Right.

When you’re ready to submit: Submit Your Pitch to PROVOKED.

The logistics

Word count: 800–1,200 words, with most pieces landing around 900–1,000.

Pay: Regular contributors are paid by the word, starting at 75 cents and up. Dear Reader pieces pay $300–$450. Strong Dear Reader writers can move onto the masthead.

Rights: Rights are work for hire. This means that PROVOKED retains rights to the published piece. Susan is generous though. You can use the material in other forms (including a memoir) as long as you’re not republishing the same piece elsewhere.

Newsletter: Every published piece goes into the Thursday newsletter to 30,000+ subscribers. Your work gets read.

For paid subscribers: Here is the actual pitch I sent to Susan — and what you can take from it for your own submissions. The best part: it was accepted and published. You can read the final piece here: When Your Colleague Isn't A Friend. She's A Frenemy.