Poetry and Nonfiction Reading Period Closing June 1st

May 1, 2014Archive, News

After much consideration, we at Black Warrior Review have made the decision to close our 2014 general poetry and nonfiction submissions earlier than planned, on June 1st. Contest submissions will remain open till September 1st.

We receive a huge number of incredible submissions –more than we could ever publish – and we wish to give these submissions the consideration they fully deserve. The past and present editing staff has also been working over the last few years on reducing our backlog and response times, and this has been overwhelmingly successful.

As a student-run (and democratic) publication, however, we’re limited in how many submissions we can work through, particularly outside of the academic year. Moreover, with our annual changeover in editing staff, we want our successors to be as lucky as we were in coming into the office without a long backlog of submissions to work through.

In giving our readers significant notice of this change in our reading dates, we also hope this won’t be an inconvenience to you. We’re honored by the attention we receive from submitters – as evidenced by our commitment to publishing only unsolicited work in our next issue – and we’re excited about being able to give all our submissions the
attention they deserve.

Bethany Startin, Poetry Editor

Connor Towne O’Neill, Nonfiction Editor