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!