If we haven’t made this abundantly clear, we love our Nooga community. Seriously, we think y’all are the coolest, and because we think so highly of you, we want to hear your stories.

Recently, we published a contributing piece from Juliet Johnson about the native hemlock, and we, Trista + Chloé, learned so much about a topic. It’s stories like this that keep us eager to learn more, and we want you to write them.

This will be you writing your stories soon. | GIF via GIPHY

How to submit a story

Write a story about a topic you love or know a lot about. We want the full story when you submit, not the idea or the outline.
Go here + fill out the form with your name, social media handles (if you have ‘em), and upload your text and photos. Please be sure you have permission to use the photos you send us, and if you didn’t take them, let us know who to credit.
Give us five days to get back to you — we’ll let you know if we decide to publish it, when it will go out, + if any edits need to be made.

Stories we want

We’re looking for passion pieces. Maybe you’re a cyclist and you have ideas for how to make Chattanooga a friendlier place for bikes. Maybe you volunteer at Crabtree Farms and want to share what veggies are in season and a recipe you can make with them. Or maybe your great-grandma passed down a story about Chattanooga that should be told.
We’re not scared of controversy, so if you have a voice that might spark a conversation, let’s hear it.
Please include links in your story so readers can click out if they want more context on the subject. See our newsletter for examples on how this is done.
We loooove photos + videos, and the more the better. Just please make sure we know who to credit.
Keep your story to 500 words or less. This doesn’t mean we won’t publish longer stories, but be conscious of your word count.

We asked at the start of the year what kind of stories you wanted us to write. Here’s some of the feedback — if you feel confident tackling any of these topics, we invite you to join us in educating + activating the community.

🌱 Local flora and fauna

🛍️ Where to thrift shop locally

🤝 Best places to volunteer — we’ve written a guide on this but would love to hear some personal, firsthand accounts.

🥾 Hidden gems for hiking + swimming

Those are just some ideas to get you started if you’re interested in writing with us. We’re confident you have some really cool stories up your sleeves, so roll ‘em up and start writing. 💪