We seek art, comics, and visual narratives of all forms that are as engaged as they are engaging. We want your work that refuses to look away from the moment we are publishing into right now, work that witnesses, that reconfigures, that radically reimagines what is and what might be. We accept submissions of single or multiple works that all together total no more than six pages, though due to our print format space is limited, and we are only able to print in greyscale at this time. We also encourage submissions of work that is multidimensional and/or not primarily page-based—textiles, collages, sculptures, blueprints, installations, and more are all actively encouraged, and we are happy to accept photographed submissions as needed. If it can exist on the space of the page in any form, feel free to send it (or to email design.bwr@gmail.com if you have questions!)

PLEASE NOTE: 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.

We seek art, comics, and visual narratives of all forms that are as engaged as they are engaging. We want your work that refuses to look away from the moment we are publishing into right now, work that witnesses, that reconfigures, that radically reimagines what is and what might be. We accept submissions of single or multiple works that all together total no more than six pages, though due to our print format space is limited, and we are only able to print in greyscale at this time. We also encourage submissions of work that is multidimensional and/or not primarily page-based—textiles, collages, sculptures, blueprints, installations, and more are all actively encouraged, and we are happy to accept photographed submissions as needed. If it can exist on the space of the page in any form, feel free to send it (or to email design.bwr@gmail.com if you have questions!)

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 53.2, our 2027 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 1st, 2026. 

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: Melissa Faliveno

Melissa Faliveno is the author of the novel  Hemlock and the essay collection Tomboyland, named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, New York Public Library, Oprah Magazine, Electric Literature, and Debutiful,  and recipient of a 2021 Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement from  the Wisconsin Library Association. Her work, which has been nominated  for a Pushcart Prize and received notable selection in Best American Essays, has appeared in Esquire, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Prairie Schooner, Brevity, and Brooklyn Rail, among others, and in the anthologies Sex and the Single Woman and Hit Repeat Until I Hate Music. The former senior editor of Poets & Writers Magazine, Melissa is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University  of North Carolina and lives in the woods outside Chapel Hill. www.melissafaliveno.com

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 53.2, our 2027 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 1st, 2026. 

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: Lesley Nneka Arimah

Lesley Nneka Arimah was born in the UK and grew up in Nigeria and wherever else her father was stationed for work. Her stories have been honored with a National Magazine Award, a Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the Caine Prize and an O. Henry Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, GRANTA and has received support from The Elizabeth George Foundation, United States Artists and MacDowell. She was selected for the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 and her  debut collection WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY won the  2017 Kirkus Prize, the 2018 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and was selected for the New York Times/PBS book club among other honors. She lives in Minneapolis and is working on a novel about you.

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 53.2, our 2027 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 1st, 2026. 

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. 

POETRY JUDGE: Kaveh Akbar

Kaveh Akbar's poems appear in the New Yorker, New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf 2021) and Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James 2017), in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry 2016). He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine (Penguin Classics  2022). Martyr! (Knopf 2024), Kaveh’s first novel, was a New York Times  Bestseller and one of the NYT’s Ten Best Books of the Year. Martyr! was also the 2024 recipient of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, the  Dayton Literary Peace Prize, a 2024 Discover Prize Finalist, and a 2024  National Book Award Finalist. Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, and lives in Iowa. His work has been translated into over thirty languages.

Black Warrior Review is seeking fiction that is unreal. We want stories that reject reality in favor of the surreal, pieces which embrace the mystical and the mythical, the spectacular and the magical. Send us all manner of absurdities, abnormalities, and alternate realities. Invite us into your hallucinations most fanciful, your oneiric interpretations, phantasmagoria galore. Give us preternatural tales that teem with disbelief—stories that could exist in no other reality but yours. We accept pieces of up to 6,000 words, but please keep in mind we are a print journal with limited physical space.

PLEASE NOTE: This category is 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.

Black Warrior Review is seeking fiction that is unreal. We want stories that reject reality in favor of the surreal, pieces which embrace the mystical and the mythical, the spectacular and the magical. Send us all manner of absurdities, abnormalities, and alternate realities. Invite us into your hallucinations most fanciful, your oneiric interpretations, phantasmagoria galore. Give us preternatural tales that teem with disbelief—stories that could exist in no other reality but yours. We accept pieces of up to 6,000 words, but please keep in mind we are a print journal with limited physical space.

We believe poetry is spiritual. We believe poetry is history. It evokes the emotional and physical spaces we have traveled before, and the possibilities of the future and the pangs in the present. Poetry is the history of words; poetry reminds us how much has happened and how much has changed.

We are interested in poems that explore the history of things and place, poems that interrogate the personal and how the colonial and postcolonial histories are embedded in the body, the tongue, the tree, the cushion, the roof, and the land and by history, what has changed through this history and what is their influence in the present.

The lands in Congo, Palestine, Sudan, the hibakujumoku trees that survived the 1945 atomic bombing, the lands in Delta State, Nigeria, The lovers of Modena, and language itself. What has changed and what has remained without change?

We are interested in poems that explore personal history, poems that explore dysfunction through the little things, poems that explore BIPOC spaces. That old chair in your mother’s room, the crack on the mug, and the dust on the note.

We are interested in experimental poems that dissect the normal, poems that explore illness, memory loss and ordinary life.

For BWR, don’t self-reject, send it our way!

PLEASE NOTE: This category is capped at 30 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.

We believe poetry is spiritual. We believe poetry is history. It evokes the emotional and physical spaces we have traveled before, and the possibilities of the future and the pangs in the present. Poetry is the history of words; poetry reminds us how much has happened and how much has changed.

We are interested in poems that explore the history of things and place, poems that interrogate the personal and how the colonial and postcolonial histories are embedded in the body, the tongue, the tree, the cushion, the roof, and the land and by history, what has changed through this history and what is their influence in the present.

The lands in Congo, Palestine, Sudan, the hibakujumoku trees that survived the 1945 atomic bombing, the lands in Delta State, Nigeria, The lovers of Modena, and language itself. What has changed and what has remained without change?

We are interested in poems that explore personal history, poems that explore dysfunction through the little things, poems that explore BIPOC spaces. That old chair in your mother’s room, the crack on the mug, and the dust on the note.

We are interested in experimental poems that dissect the normal, poems that explore illness, memory loss and ordinary life.

For BWR, don’t self-reject, send it our way!

Nonfiction can, and should be, uncertain of itself. We should be wary of anything that claims it knows the truth, the whole truth, the capital T “Truth.”

We want alternate versions of the story. The one you believe, the one that’s true, the one you want to be true. How your beloved’s tell the story differently—or how they would tell it differently. We want your speculation, your “maybe”s, your “absolutely”s, your “never”s, and we want them all with a grain of salt. We want to know where your memory fails, where you believe it’s unequivocally correct, where you have room for multiple realities. Most importantly, we want to know why you believe what you believe, why you don’t want to, why you can’t. 

We want to know the truths and lies you tell yourself and the ones the world has told you. Western science, medicine, and history have used their versions of the capital T “Truth” to control and silence people for centuries. We want work that examines how these lies came to be, how they continue to scapegoat and divide us. In a world where marginalized histories are erased from textbooks and unfounded science is promoted by our government to further disenfranchise and erase us, confront these lies and tell us the truth. Call them out. 

Bring us your messy truths, your unabashed lies, your I-don’t-know’s, and everything in between. Make us question reality. While we would love to publish your longer work, we only have so much space in our journal, so please limit your submissions to 4000 words.

PLEASE NOTE: This category is 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.

Nonfiction can, and should be, uncertain of itself. We should be wary of anything that claims it knows the truth, the whole truth, the capital T “Truth.”

We want alternate versions of the story. The one you believe, the one that’s true, the one you want to be true. How your beloved’s tell the story differently—or how they would tell it differently. We want your speculation, your “maybe”s, your “absolutely”s, your “never”s, and we want them all with a grain of salt. We want to know where your memory fails, where you believe it’s unequivocally correct, where you have room for multiple realities. Most importantly, we want to know why you believe what you believe, why you don’t want to, why you can’t. 

We want to know the truths and lies you tell yourself and the ones the world has told you. Western science, medicine, and history have used their versions of the capital T “Truth” to control and silence people for centuries. We want work that examines how these lies came to be, how they continue to scapegoat and divide us. In a world where marginalized histories are erased from textbooks and unfounded science is promoted by our government to further disenfranchise and erase us, confront these lies and tell us the truth. Call them out. 

Bring us your messy truths, your unabashed lies, your I-don’t-know’s, and everything in between. Make us question reality. While we would love to publish your longer work, we only have so much space in our journal, so please limit your submissions to 4000 words.

BWR seeks work that explodes, refuses, and deconstructs the boundaries of genre altogether.

We want work interested in what becomes possible when we dissolve the conventions and constraints of genre in favor of work informed by a multitude of disciplines, practices, and knowledges. Work that utilizes hybridity to engage with how genre itself is frequently both a product and a tool of capital-colonial powers and institutions, work that moves between and across and beyond genre as an active act of resistance and refusal.

In particular, we encourage work in conversation with writing/arts practices that have long been defying and working outside of singular genre categories—artmaking traditions and histories that are frequently delegitimized and dismissed by Western literary canon constructions of genre.

Send us your work that is genre-interdisciplinary, genre-multimodal, genre-expansive, genre-denying, genre-exploding, genre-transcendent, genre-undoing. If you’ve ever squinted at a piece and thought, where do I even send this, what genre even is this? Send it here!

We accept submissions of up to 10 pages, though please note that due to our print format, space is limited. In addition, at this time we are only able to publish hybrid pieces in black and white.

PLEASE NOTE: This category is capped at 30 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.

BWR seeks work that explodes, refuses, and deconstructs the boundaries of genre altogether.

We want work interested in what becomes possible when we dissolve the conventions and constraints of genre in favor of work informed by a multitude of disciplines, practices, and knowledges. Work that utilizes hybridity to engage with how genre itself is frequently both a product and a tool of capital-colonial powers and institutions, work that moves between and across and beyond genre as an active act of resistance and refusal.

In particular, we encourage work in conversation with writing/arts practices that have long been defying and working outside of singular genre categories—artmaking traditions and histories that are frequently delegitimized and dismissed by Western literary canon constructions of genre.

Send us your work that is genre-interdisciplinary, genre-multimodal, genre-expansive, genre-denying, genre-exploding, genre-transcendent, genre-undoing. If you’ve ever squinted at a piece and thought, where do I even send this, what genre even is this? Send it here!

We accept submissions of up to 10 pages, though please note that due to our print format, space is limited. In addition, at this time we are only able to publish hybrid pieces in black and white.

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!

Black Warrior Review is seeking submissions of all genres for our tenth edition of Boyfriend Village: the Playground Boyfriend.

For many of us, the playground is where we first act out dominant societal institutions: performing weddings, playing house, or building business empires from woodchips. However, the playground is also where the boundaries of those institutions can dissolve entirely. Yes, the wedding is still on, but today, the brides are both mermaid horses with ice powers. The playground is space for experimenting with possibility. How high can you swing? How dizzy can you make yourself? If the jump skins your knee today, will it do the same tomorrow? This ground is where discovery happens, where exploration runs reckless, where rules can be more than broken; they can be thrown out entirely. We all love work which surprises the audience, but when does the artist surprise themself? Playground Boyfriend seeks art which embraces play, whether that be through wordplay and constraint, a spiritual release of control, a refusal to settle in one genre, a commitment to silliness, radical acts of imagination, or digging wormful holes in the dirt. 

In most spaces, it isn’t proper to play. Play is treated as a luxury, a distraction, an unnecessary accessory to adult existence. Playground Boyfriend begs to disagree and argues that play is a vital mode of accessing what could be, and that work which plays can explore all stages of life. On the playground, there is room to move wildly without the bounds of itineraries, rules, or conventions of the restrictive here and now. Play towards a realized queer futurity, imagine the potential for new worlds, unshackle your art from all traces of colonialism, heteronormativity, or hyperindividualism—build a playground divorced from so-called reality. Bring Playground Boyfriend your disobedient grammars, your funky mix, your improper, your bold and wise. Leap from monkey bar to cumulus cloud, tongue out to gravity. 

Playground Boyfriend invites you to disrespect authority, smash borders, make up the rules, turn office buildings to jungle gyms. There is no one form of playground—though we love tire swings and seesaws as much as anyone—because anywhere can become a playground, even trees and oceans and superstores and kitchen tables and grass blades and sewer systems and housefires. Claim new grounds for creativity. Let your play sprawl. Playground Boyfriend is here, one knee pressed in the mud, offering a blue raspberry Ring-Pop in exchange for your love, your rage, your melancholy, your bittersweet. We want your anything, so long as it plays. 

Submissions are open between May 15, 2026, and June 15, 2026. While themed, this is open to interpretation. If you think your boyfriend might belong in our village, please send them along!

There is one submission category for all genres. We accept fiction, poetry, nonfiction, hybrid, visual and multimedia art, as well as sound collage, video, games, and more. You may use your cover letter to tell us as much or as little about your work as you like.

Simultaneous submissions are welcome. Send prose pieces no longer than 6,000 words. For flash (pieces under 1,000 words), you may include up to three prose pieces in a submission. For poetry, you may send us up to five poems, with a maximum submission length of 10 pages. For graphic, audio, and visual work, if Submittable accepts the file type, so will we! Color images most welcome.

There is a $5 submission fee. Submission fees are used to pay contributors.