We want your work that doesn’t fit neatly into a single box. Your speculative essays, your visual lyrics, your stories that no longer resemble stories. Genre is only as useful as it facilitates a draft, so who cares what you call it. We want your unusual, uncanny valley, experimental, no-longer-a-piece-of-writing kind of work. We want pieces that breaks down conventions of writing while also breaking down conventions of society. We want your work that unlearns rules and teaches us liberation. 

Due to our editorial format, not every piece will fit. Please feel free to submit up to ten pages. 

BWR typically features a single artist per issue, but for 52.1, we are inviting you to submit your work for a fresh, experimental approach. You can send up to four one-page artworks for consideration or a multi-page piece (the latter will be presented via QR code in the issue). We’re looking for innovative works that merge the narrative depth of storytelling with the visual impact of graphic art. Please for this category, submit your work in .jpg, .tiff, or .pdf format.

We want your obscene, the writing that weirds language, that defies norms, and the communities of love that break down systems of oppression. We want work that transcends individualism and uplifts social change. We want to learn how you keep yourself and your beloveds rooted to the Earth. Nuance your experiences, interrogate what you take for granted, and call yourself out. We accept work from all people but are especially interested in writing that celebrates the joy of the global majority, that grounds itself to land and ecology, and examines our shared humanity. 

While we would love to publish your longer pieces, we have limited space, so keep your submissions to a maximum of five thousand words. 

Poems are political.

Poems are power. Poems are people.

We seek to publish poems that encompass this tangibility: poems that deconstruct whiteness and reconstruct history; poems that hold space for chronic illness and disability; that create discomfort and break down colonial belief systems.

We want poems that protest, in form and content. We want poems that resist tradition and policy. We want poems that reimagine and rebuild.

So, send us your rule-breakers. We welcome erasures, persona, docupoetics, and other experimental forms. Submit up to 10 pages.

BWR is looking for works of fiction possessed of strong vision, vivid imagination, and relentless curiosity. We want stories that seduce, transform, and implicate us. We accept pieces of up to 6,000 words, but please keep in mind we are a print journal with limited physical space.

We seek pieces that transgress borders, disturb hierarchies, and unsettle power—stories invested in the experiences of the marginalized and the resistance of imperial binaries. Such work can lead us to dark places, but this is not a venue for torture/misery porn. We seek pieces with broader ambitions.

BWR welcomes the speculative, the uncanny, and the strange. Send us your monsters; get under our skin.

Black Warrior Review is deeply grateful for your generosity. Donations help sustain our magazine and support our contributors and artists. Please note:

• Donations made through this portal are not tax-deductible.
• To make a tax-deductible donation, you can contact the Office of Student Media when they reopen in mid-January 2025.

This portal is for donations only. To submit work to BWR, please visit our submissions page.

Thank you for supporting BWR and our literary community!