In “Ode to Autumn,” John Keats described autumn as the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” This September, we are pleased to be publishing an issue reflecting seasonal abundance. One grouping of original articles explores the timely theme of infectious disease through a health humanities lens, while another interrogates the contested phenomenology and ontology of cancer. A third grouping of articles examines medical education through comics and creative writing. Arthur Frank, Bradley Lewis, and Khalid Ali and Mona El Shim contribute thoughtful book reviews, and we include four poems. As the journal grows and evolves, we hope to continue organizing your content into themes that feel particularly germane to the field.

Change continues to define the journal in other ways as well. Over the summer, we rolled out new publication genres, which we hope will generate even more creative, robust, and highly relevant content for the journal. The article types are as follows:

  • Scholarly Articles addressing health humanities topics as defined in the Aims and Scope. These submissions can be up to 10,000 words excluding references and abstract. Formatting typically follows humanities long-form scholarly genres, with an introduction, theoretical framing and brief literature review, discussion of the topic with (textual) evidence and argumentation, and a conclusion speaking to transdisciplinary health humanities concerns.

  • Review Essays covering at least 2 and up to 4 recently published books on a topic of interest. These submissions can be up to 6,000 words excluding references and abstract. Authors should submit a query to the editor via email to confirm the journal’s interest in publishing a review essay on the identified books. Review essays should specifically address how the books in question contribute to health humanities scholarship and/or teaching.

  • Educational Research Articles about Humanities in Health Professions Education or graduate or baccalaureate Health Humanities Programs. These submissions can be up to 7,500 words excluding references and abstract. Educational research articles should contribute to theory and/or methodology in health humanities education research or report on large-scale studies of the state of the field, rather than demonstrate a successful program or argue for the value of humanities in medical or health professions education. (Introducing innovative activities or curricula can be accomplished under Innovations in Health Humanities, described below.)

  • Forum Essays are collections of 2–4 short pieces that address circulating “big questions” in the field (for example, what is the role of suffering in medical student experience?) or theoretical framings (for example, political economy and health humanities). Authors should submit a query to the editor via email to confirm the journal’s interest in the topic. Each forum essay can be up to 2,000 words and include 10 references. The collection should be submitted as a single submission with one corresponding author and abstract.

  • Short Takes: Innovations in Health Humanities are essays of up to 2,000 words excluding references that (1) describe innovations in health humanities education or (2) interpret artifacts, documents, or media, including visual arts, with the purpose of introducing them to the journal’s readership for teaching or research purposes. These essays need not provide a literature review or description of research methods, and they do not include an abstract. They are meant to be rigorous but less formal scholarly interventions written in engaging prose with the intention of keeping readers up-to-date with developments in the field or emerging methods and ideas. Examples in this genre include descriptions of curricular innovations with brief comments about added value, reports on health humanities program development in global contexts, and descriptive interpretations of literary texts or films and their potential to contribute to research or teaching.

  • Creative Engagements include essays of up to 1,500 words or a series of photographs or other visual representations, including comics, that creatively engage with the field’s enduring and emerging questions. These submissions may have up to 5 references and do not need an abstract.

  • Poetry that illuminates the primary foci of health humanities scholarship. For example, we seek poems that explore, critique, and/or record the experiences of illness, healing, embodiment, mortality, loss, disability, diversity, caregiving, health education, and medical practice.

  • Brief Critical Reviews of books or media of interest to the journal’s readership. Reviews can be up to 1,200 words if they cover one work. Authors should send an email query to the Book Review editor, Tony Miksanek (tmiksanek@aol.com), if they intend to submit a review to confirm the journal’s interest in publishing the review.

This list is available on the journal website on the Journal Updates page (https://www.springer.com/journal/10912/updates), under “What We Publish,” which also includes a conceptual elaboration of the journal’s aims and scope. Under “Structuring Articles,” on the same web page, there is a table to compare requirements for the various genres and to aid authors in formatting manuscripts. We are excited to see the work of our colleagues come rolling in, and please don’t hesitate to contact us with ideas. Also, readers can find us on Twitter at the handle @JMedHumanities. We wish everyone a happy autumn and happy reading.