Description
We’re paying five BIPOC journalists $1000 to write about LGBTQ2S+ people at work
Apply to Xtra’s mentorship program for early-career BIPOC journalists by October 27.
The world of work feels broken. Young people are struggling hard with poverty, precarious work, bad working conditions, bullshit jobs and burnout. For LGBTQ2S+ people, these issues have a particularly sharp flavour: nearly half of trans people report workplace harassment, bisexual women face an enormous wage gap and workplace policies often don’t recognize queer identities or families.
But there’s a long history of queer and trans people taking fights for fairness and equality into our workplaces–and winning. Work is where we make ends meet; where we spend the majority of our waking weekday hours; the avenue through which many of us try to improve the world.
Xtra is making an editorial package all about LGBTQ2S+ people at work. To help make it, we’re looking for five early-career BIPOC writers based in Canada to participate in a mentorship program.
The five mentees will come together as a team to plan the editorial package, pitch story ideas and write articles about work. Each mentee will write one article that will be published on Xtra’s website, as well as contribute to multimedia content about their article.
Mentees will receive $500 for their participation in the program and another $500 for their published article.
Xtra is a non-profit online magazine and community platform covering LGBTQ2S+ culture, politics, relationships and health. For more info about our mission, read our principles.
About the mentorship and mentor
Mentees will work with guest editor Saima Desai. They will also have opportunities for training and networking with Xtra’s editorial staff and other journalists and journalism organizations.
Mentees can expect to spend roughly five hours per week on the program from late October to late December 2025. This will include meetings with the group of mentees, with Saima, and with other Xtra staff; researching, pitching, and writing your article; collaborating with Xtra’s multimedia team on other content to accompany your article; and other potential training and networking opportunities.
Saima is an editor, writer and indie media diehard. She's written for The Breach, THIS Magazine, NOW Toronto, and The Tyee. She's a senior editor at The Grind and The Breach; sits on the editorial collective of Between The Lines Books; and was previously the editor of Briarpatch Magazine, where she won Issue Grand Prix at the 2022 National Magazine Awards for Briarpatch's Land Back issue. At Briarpatch, she edited the magazine’s annual Labour Issue and mentored young BIPOC writers and editors.
This mentorship is funded by the Ken Popert Media Fellowship, established in 2021 to support projects that bring new voices to Xtra. It honours the legacy of Ken Popert, the former executive director of Xtra’s publisher Pink Triangle Press.
About the editorial package
The focus of the editorial package is LGBTQ2S+ people at work. We are looking for writers who are interested in exploring work through longform features, analysis, investigations, explainers, Q&As, personal essays, profiles, reviews and other contributions that defy standard categorization.
Below is an incomplete list of topics that mentees might explore:
Past and present struggles for labour rights for LGBTQ2S+ workers (e.g. protection against harassment and discrimination, inclusive benefits and facilities)
LGBTQ2S+ experiences of unemployment and poverty
Working inside organizations that serve the LGBTQ2S+ community
Workers fielding attacks from the anti-trans far-right (e.g. librarians facing protests for programming drag queen story hours)
What unions can do for queer and trans workers–and what queer and trans workers have done for unions
Queer and trans people working in unconventional workplaces (e.g. worker co-ops, freelancing, farming, sex work)
Queer care work, gendered work and reproductive labour
Zero-work, anti-work and degrowth
How to apply
To apply, send the following to saima.desai@xtramagazine.com by October 27:
Your up-to-date resume
Two samples of your writing
A letter of no more than 500 words that answers the following questions:
What’s a topic about work that you’re interested in exploring during this mentorship program? Why do you think it’s timely and important? (This could be a broad question or a specific story. Feel free to write about a story idea, but know that–in discussion with Saima and the rest of the mentee group–you may end up writing about something else.)
Why would you benefit from this mentorship program?
We will contact selected mentees by November 7. Whether or not you’re selected for this program, we will get back to you with a bit of feedback on your application.
Requirements
This mentorship is for you if you are all of the following:
An early-career journalist. (This means you should be less than five years into your journalism career. It doesn’t mean you need to be a student or a young person–you could be starting your journalism journey later in your life, or without going to school.)
You are Black, Indigenous and/or a person of colour
You are queer and/or trans
You are based in Canada
