Boyfriend Village is Black Warrior Review’s online edition, released once and sometimes twice a year. 

In March 2018, BWR chose to rename and reconfigure its online issue in honor of Zach Doss, who had passed away unexpectedly. Zach was a dedicated BWR Editor and a brilliant writer of queer, fabulist, surprising works; Boyfriend Village has become a special haven for such writing and much, much more. 

In honor of Zach’s bold vision and legacy, Boyfriend Village seeks to be a fully accessible space for unusual, boundary-pushing literary content, especially work from the margins, work that makes exciting use of digital platforms, and work that other well-established journals might overlook. We hope that with the increased online presence Boyfriend Village allows, we might provide a larger platform for underrepresented aesthetics and writing communities. Work found in Boyfriend Village resists and challenges notions of “the page” alongside other extraordinary pieces you might expect to find in the print issues of BWR.

Every issue of Boyfriend Village has a new Online Editor, who selects a new theme and keeps the village refreshed and moving forward, even as it honors a vital part of BWR history.

All Boyfriend Village contributors are paid for their work.

See more below: 

• Our growing collection of BoVi issues (Delicious Boyfriend, Fox Boyfriend, Double Negative Boyfriend, and The Secret Boyfriend)

•  Zach Doss’s Grace Paley Prize-winning collection Boy Oh Boy from Red Hen Press

• More about Zach and his writing on his website 

• BWR print issues 42.1 and 42.2 edited by Zach Doss

• “Welcome to the Village with All of the Boyfriends”: An introductory letter to the first BoVi issue by Brandi Wells, a fellow former BWR Editor, writer, and dear friend to Zach 

• Any current calls for submissions on our general submissions page

Zach Doss
1984–2018