Write With Us: A Call for Human-First Contributions to the UP Blog
An earlier version of this post was published in July 2025. It has been revised for clarity as my perspectives and intentions continue to evolve. -sjl
Building, Together
Unencumbered Press is inevitably shaped by my values, intuition, and interests—but I want to be clear: I am not Unencumbered Press. The press is bigger than me, and the blog needs to reflect that.
I’m grateful to the people who’ve found their way here. The range of voices is what matters.
And we welcome more voices.
Write for the Unencumbered Press Blog
If you have something to say about books, publishing, art, technology, grief, healing, queerness, nature, justice, language, or anything else we care about—from literacy and poetry to access or desire—consider sharing your voice on the UP Blog.
We welcome guest contributors to submit creative work, reflections, reviews, interviews, poetry, personal essays, and more that align with Unencumbered Press’s mission: intentionality, innovation, intuition, and intelligence.
Whether you’re a writer, artist, educator, or simply someone with a perspective to share, we’d love to hear from you.
If you want to contribute to the UP blog, send an email to publisher@unencumberedpress.com. Introduce yourself and share what you have in mind.
Read (and Shape) the Blog
None of this matters without readers. If you already follow our posts—thank you. Truly. I’d love to know more about what draws you here, how you engage with the blog, and what you want more of. This site is handmade by a one-woman publishing house (that’s me), with some incredible partners helping bring our books to the readers who need them. Comment or email me at stephanie@unencumberedpress.com to offer feedback.
Our stance on AI-generated content
Because I invite contributions to the Unencumbered Press blog, I want to be clear about where I land on AI.
I don’t want AI slop on the blog (or anywhere).
I don’t expect contributors to avoid AI tools entirely.
What matters here is intention and accountability.
If AI tools were used sparingly—to think through an idea, revise a sentence, or support accessibility—and the final work reflects a human voice and lived perspective, that’s probably fine.
If the work itself is generated by AI, ultimately detached from human experience, it’s not a fit.
Unencumbered Press exists to support human-made work in a cultural moment that increasingly rewards automation and disposability.
February 12, 2026 @ 9:44 pm
There sure is a lot of concern about AI right now, which reminds me about other transitions in technology when they happened. These revolutions never turn out quite the way anyone expects.
The example I think of first, is when computers became affordable and started appearing in offices and at home, once the prices came down and they became easier to use. Yes, I’m old enough to have begun my writing career on a portable electric typewriter. We were told that the computer revolution would instantly change the way we did things, by making paper obsolete, and quickly create a paperless world. What the forecasters didn’t foresee, at least initially, was that anybody could press a button on a computer print out thousands of pages of unneeded documents in an avalanche of paper. Printers seemed to be running constantly when they first arrived, filling the office with paper mountains because it was easy to do.
I’d bet that paper consumption increased when anybody could too easily print out documents that didn’t really need to be printed out. In time this has subsided, but that said, we’ve been able to readily use computers since the early 1980s and are still working out how a paperless office would work 45 years later.
Same for AI. It’s going to be a long haul before the best ways to use this resource are determined and there’s going to be a lot of learn, with some painful lessons about it before we can use AI wisely and responsibly.
February 12, 2026 @ 10:45 pm
Well said, George. As a kid we had a word processor! It looked like a computer with a monitor and keyboard, but it only offered a place to type and format. In the early 90s, we had our first family computer… I kept all my poetry saved on 3.5-inch floppies! I was very into software like Print Shop (so it tracks that I love digital graphic design tools today). Nothing does change in an instant. Emails, ebooks, screens, etc. have all changed our relationships to paper, but a paperless world has never felt like a possibility to me. I don’t imagine our eyes/brains are well equipped for entirely digital reading. Tools amplify human behavior. They don’t automatically make us wiser. We have to build norms and values around them. And that takes time, conversation, and, as you said, some painful lessons.
It has been wild to experience the rise of generative ai. I feel like when I started my career in publishing, it wasn’t a thing, until one day it was everywhere. I remember my boss at the time directing us to use it for marketing and editorial. It felt so cool! But fast forward just a few years, and all these very legitimate concerns a part of the conversation. I agree that the the throughline has to be using it wisely and responsibly… intentionally. We need to keep guiding questions front of mind. How do we use new tools without abandoning the human relationships and integrity at the center of creative work? How do we stay accountable (socially, environmentally, etc.) while still staying curious and adaptive?
Thank you for chiming in on the conversation!