“MY MOTHER’S PAINTING”
Photo, Laura Spence-Ash

Want to share the story
of your keepthing?

1. Write it down. In straightforward, plainspoken prose, in 600 words or less, tell the story of the object and the person it’s connected to. The goal is to bring that person to life—to help readers know them well enough to appreciate their loss. Don’t worry if you’re not a writer; every Keepthings story gets lots of TLC, and some of the most beautiful stories have come from people who don’t consider themselves writers at all. What matters is that you have a treasured object connecting you to someone who was important in your life; we’re here to help with the rest. When you’re done, paste the story into the submission form. All stories must be submitted via the form. Please note that we don’t accept previously published stories, and we generally don’t run multiple stories about the same type of object. Not sure if your object will work? Email us and we’ll let you know.

2. Take pictures of your object. The submission form lets you submit up to five photos. Please follow our photo guidelines. (If you send pictures that don’t follow the guidelines and we decide to publish your story, we’ll ask you to reshoot.)

3. Wait to hear from us. We look at every single submission. If yours seems like a good fit, we’ll email you with follow-up questions (there are always follow-up questions) and go back and forth with you on edits (every story is edited). Unfortunately, we can’t publish every submission we receive, but we try our best to respond to each one. We appreciate your interest and your patience.