welcome to the

 

BOYFRIEND VILLAGE

welcome to the

 

BOYFRIEND VILLAGE

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.

 

 

2023 Boyfriend Village: Extraterrestrial Boyfriend

 

Every person is a planet. What is more alien than a stranger?

Extraterrestrial Boyfriend calls for all things out of this world. By out of this world, we don’t just mean alien stories (although we definitely love alien stories). We want to see our paramours explore love in complicated forms, ineffable existences, extraterrestrial forms of communication and more.

Extraterrestrial Boyfriend invites queerings of the mundane, first-contact narratives, and works that exist outside the bounds of the page. The Extraterrestrial Boyfriend understands that nothing is more alien than the world around them.

Extraterrestrial Boyfriend will encourage writers and artists alike to invoke all things strange, to explore all things unknown, and will invite them to try and unveil the secrets of the universe. This call for submissions will ask contributors to unravel the ways they communicate with others in alien ways. How do you engage with the extraterrestrial? How do you identify as extraterrestrial? In what ways are the mundane also extraterrestrial? What is your most alien encounter?

Extraterrestrial Boyfriend invites interpretations of this theme that we may not have yet considered. We are trusting you, our lovers, to bring us work that will challenge genre divides.

The Extraterrestrial Boyfriend wants to specifically invite paramours that are of queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent, and other marginalized experiences, and especially work from people of color.

Submissions are open between April 1, 2023, and May 1, 2023. 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 7,000 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 $3 submission fee. Submission fees are used to pay contributors.

 

See more below: 

  •  Zach Doss’s Grace Paley Prize-winning collection Boy Oh Boy from Red Hen Press
  • BWR print issues 42.1 and 42.2 edited by Zach Doss

Zach Doss
1984–2018