The entry fee covers one prose submission of up to 6,000 words. This category is for both domestic and international submissions.

• Cover letters are welcome.
• Please do not include identifying information in your submission document. We will use your Submittable information to contact you, so make sure your contact information is accurate and up-to-date.
• Multiple submissions are welcome, as are simultaneous submissions. We ask that you notify us immediately if your submission is accepted elsewhere. You can message us through Submittable or reach out to us at blackwarriorreview@gmail.com. Include the title of your submission in the subject line. 
• We accept only previously unpublished work for publication.
• The winner will receive a cash prize and publication in BWR 52.2. The first runner-up in each genre receives monetary compensation, acknowledgment in the print issue, and online publication. 
• The contest is open until August 16th, 2025.
   

Additional Information:

• We welcome international submissions.
• Our commitment to diversity is reflected in both the writers we support and the stories we publish.
• AI-generated work is not accepted.
• We offer an optional fee waiver for anyone who needs it, which can be requested whenever we are open for submissions by emailing us at feewaiver.bwr@gmail.com. 

FICTION JUDGE:

Sarah Pinsker is the author of over sixty works of short fiction, one novella, two novels, and two collections. Her work has won four Nebula Awards (Best Novel, A Song For A New Day; Best Novelette, "Our Lady of the Open Road," Best Novelette, "Two Truths And A Lie," Best Short Story, "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather,"), two Hugo Awards ("Two Truths And a Lie" and "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather"), the Philip K Dick Award, the Locus Award, the Eugie Foster Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and been nominated for numerous Nebula, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. Her fiction has been translated into almost a dozen languages and published in magazines including Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Uncanny and in many anthologies and year's bests.

The entry fee covers one submission of up to 6,000 words. This category is for both domestic and international submissions.

• Cover letters are welcome.
• Please do not include identifying information in your submission document. We will use your Submittable information to contact you, so make sure your contact information is accurate and up-to-date.
• Multiple submissions are welcome, as are simultaneous submissions. We ask that you notify us immediately if your submission is accepted elsewhere. You can message us through Submittable or reach out to us at blackwarriorreview@gmail.com. Include the title of your submission in the subject line. 
• We accept only previously unpublished work for publication.
• The winner will receive a cash prize and publication in BWR 52.2, our 2026 Spring/Summer issue. The first runner-up in each genre receives monetary compensation, acknowledgment in the print issue, and online publication. 
• The contest is open until August 16th, 2025. 

Additional Information:

• We welcome international submissions.
• Our commitment to diversity is reflected in both the writers we support and the stories we publish.
• AI-generated work is not accepted.
• We offer an optional fee waiver for anyone who needs it, which can be requested whenever we are open for submissions by emailing us at feewaiver.bwr@gmail.com. 

NONFICTION JUDGE: Elissa Washuta

Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe. Her essay collection White Magic was selected as a finalist for the PEN/Open Book Award, longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award, and named among the best books of 2021 by TIME, the New York Public Library, and NPR. She is the author of My Body Is a Book of Rules and Starvation Mode, and with Theresa Warburton, she co-edited the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. Elissa’s honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Creative Capital award, and the Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award. She is an associate professor at the Ohio State University, where she teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Submit a packet of up to 5 poems, all in one file (.docx or .PDF preferred). This category is for both domestic and international submissions.

• Cover letters are welcome.
• Please do not include identifying information in your submission document. We will use your Submittable information to contact you, so make sure your contact information is accurate and up-to-date.
• Multiple submissions are welcome, as are simultaneous submissions. We ask that you notify us immediately if your submission is accepted elsewhere. You can message us through Submittable or reach out to us at blackwarriorreview@gmail.com. Include the title of your submission in the subject line. 
• We accept only previously unpublished work for publication.
• The winner of our Poetry category will receive a cash prize and print publication in BWR 52.2, our 2026 Spring/Summer issue. The first runner-up in each genre (Nonfiction, Poetry, Fiction, and Flash) receives monetary compensation, acknowledgment in the print issue, and online publication. 
• The contest is open until August 16th, 2025. A shortlist of ten pieces will be notified in September of 2025, and we’ll announce the winners & runners-up for each category in October.
   

Additional Information:

• We welcome international submissions.
• Our commitment to diversity is reflected in both the writers we support and the stories we publish.
• AI-generated work is not accepted.
• We offer an optional fee waiver for anyone who needs it, which can be requested whenever we are open for submissions by emailing us at feewaiver.bwr@gmail.com. 

PLEASE NOTE: For this category, please limit submissions to five pages. Submissions to this category can expect a rejection or a hold letter two weeks after the submission date. Other guidelines remain the same as in the general submissions guidelines.

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 5 pages.

PLEASE NOTE: This category are capped at 20 submissions and will be closed once that number is reached. Submissions to this category can expect a rejection or a hold letter two weeks after the submission date. Other guidelines remain the same as in the general submissions guidelines.

Our 2025 Nonfiction Editor, Abi Diaz, wants your writing that defies empire, upends capitalism and your 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, to your ancestral lands, even when colonial violence has tried to sever these spiritual roots.

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 four thousand words.

PLEASE NOTE: This category are capped at 20 submissions and will be closed once that number is reached. Submissions to this category can expect a rejection or a hold letter two weeks after the submission date. Other guidelines remain the same as in the general submissions guidelines.

Our 2025 Experimental Forms Editor, Abi Diaz, wants 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 break down conventions of writing while also breaking down conventions of society. We want your work that unlearns colonial and ablesist rules of literary convention and teaches us liberation.

Due to the nature of our print journal, not every piece will fit. Please feel free to submit up to ten pages that make sense in a black and white print editorial format.

For this submission period, we’re looking for stories about communities. So many stories are about ‘I,’ and ‘me.’ This is your opportunity to tell a story about ‘us.’ Bring us your queer found families, your singing cities, your alien hive-minds, your villages, temples, tribes, unions, cults, co-ops, dance floors, and every other ‘us’ you can imagine. We accept pieces of up to 6,000 words, but please keep in mind we are a print journal with limited physical space.

‘Us’ is not a neutral term. We aren’t seeking ‘us’ in the hopes of defining a ‘them.’ In the face of climate disaster and settler colonialism, what connects an ‘us?’ This is likewise not a venue for the collapsing of an us into a single dimension. Communities are never one thing. Where is there disagreement in an ‘us?’ When is ‘us’ too much, or not enough?

BWR welcomes the polyvocal, the mish-mash, and the speculative. If you’re not sure you fit, don’t self-reject; send it in! Who knows; maybe you and us are a we?

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.

Our 2025 Nonfiction Editor, Abi Diaz, wants your writing that defies empire, upends capitalism and your 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, to your ancestral lands, even when colonial violence has tried to sever these spiritual roots.

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 four thousand words.

Our 2025 Experimental Forms Editor, Abi Diaz, wants 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 break down conventions of writing while also breaking down conventions of society. We want your work that unlearns colonial and ablesist rules of literary convention and teaches us liberation.

Due to the nature of our print journal, not every piece will fit. Please feel free to submit up to ten pages that make sense in a black and white print editorial format.

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!