We are excited to announce our first ever Experimental Forms Contest judged by Marwa Helal.

For our inaugural Experimental Forms contest, we want your speculative essays, visual lyrics, 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 pieces that break down conventions of writing while breaking down conventions of society. We want your work that unlearns colonial and ableist rules of literary convention. and teaches us liberation. 

Winning entries will be published online, so send your formal weirdness that cannot be published in print: photos, color, multimedia writing wonders, and more. 

Submission Guidelines:

• All submissions must be unpublished (online or print). Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please notify us if accepted elsewhere.
• The winner will receive a cash prize of $300, online publication in the BWR website, and notation in issue 52.2. 
• The runner-up will receive $100, online publication, and notation in issue 52.2.
• Finalists will receive notation in issue 52.2 and are considered for general publication.
• The deadline for submissions is December 1, 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.
   

Guest Judge: Marwa Helal

Marwa Helal is a poet and journalist. She is the author of Ante body (Nightboat Books, 2022), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Invasive species (Nightboat Books, 2019), the chapbook I am Made to Leave I am Made to Return (No Dear, 2017) and a Belladonna chaplet (2021). She has been awarded fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the Hawthornden Foundation, New York Foundation of the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Poets House, and Cave Canem, among others.

 Helal is the winner of BOMB Magazine’s Biennial 2016 Poetry Contest, selected by Bhanu Kapil. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Paris Review, POETRY Magazine, Boston Review, and Best American Experimental Writing 2018. She has presented her work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum and the Guggenheim Museum.

 Born in Al Mansurah, Egypt, she currently lives in the United States. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from The New School and her BA in journalism and international studies from Ohio Wesleyan University.

Black Warrior Review is thrilled to announce our Narrative Comics Contest, and we want artists, writers, and storytellers who live in the space between words and images to send us your boldest and most captivating work. 

We are looking for comics that don’t just tell a story, but become a story: where line and language move alongside each other and are inseparable, where images carry the weight of emotions, where the unstated comes alive, and where words crack open with new meanings. We want to see pieces that take risks and stretch the possibilities of what narrative comics can be. Give us styles. Surprise us. Move us. Make us see the form differently.

We welcome both completed stories and excerpts that can stand alone. We want them literary, experimental, autobiographical, fantastical, hybrid, and everything in between. What matters to us is the narrative drive: the sense that something important, intimate, or unexpected is unfolding in the space between your words and images. We are especially excited by work that pushes the form forward, through voice, through structure, through perspective. Open to all artists and writers, regardless of age, nationality, or publishing history. Collaborative submissions (writer + artist teams) are encouraged, too.

There is no set theme. We want you to feel free, unbound, to bring the stories only you can tell.

We’re ready to be surprised!

Submission Guidelines:

• Submit 1 piece, up to 15 pages total.
• Black-and-white or color accepted.
• Files must be in .pdf or .jpg, .gif, .tiff, .png format, high resolution.
• All submissions must be unpublished (online or print). Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please notify us if accepted elsewhere.
• The winner will receive a cash prize of $300, online publication in the BWR website, and notation in issue 52.2. 
• The runner-up will receive $100, online publication, and notation in issue 52.2.
• Finalists will receive notation in issue 52.2 and are considered for general publication.
• The deadline for submissions is November 4, 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.
   

Guest Judge: Vikesh Kapoor

Vikesh Kapoor is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines race, class and identity as a first-generation American. He utilizes photography, video, poetry and songs.

He has had solo exhibitions at The Print Center, Philadelphia PA; Filter Space, Chicago, IL; and New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery, LA. He has been included in group exhibitions at Aperture Foundation, New York, NY; Houston Center for Photography, TX; Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA; and SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA, among other venues.

Kapoor has received fellowships and awards including the inaugural Google Image Equity Fellowship, the Silver Eye Center for Photography Keystone Fellowship Award, Daylight Photo Award, The Hopper Prize, LensCulture Art Photography Juror's Pick Award, PhotoNola Review Grand Prize and Project Development Grant from CENTER.

His poems have appeared in The Normal School. He is an alumnus of the Tin House Summer and Winter Workshops and VONA. 

Kapoor’s songs have been highlighted by The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Interview Magazine and The Guardian.

In October 2025, his work will make its major museum debut at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian as part of The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today.

He can be reached at vikeshkapoor.com

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!