This year I am judging the Fiction contest for the University of Alabama’s Black Warrior Review. The contest is also open to Poetry, judged by Rachel McKibbens, and Non-fiction, judged by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib. The prize in each category is $1000 and publication in BWR.

In an interview I talked about what I’m looking for:

Joy. Story. Voice. Beauty and brilliance and risk—a person, an image, an idea or a place that takes me somewhere new then returns me increased. Gorgeous sentences are all very well but if they serve a stale plot or clichéd character, the story is dead on arrival. My advice? Write what you’ve been avoiding. Go there and see what happens…

You can send up to 7,000 words. The deadline is September 1, 2017. Submit!

(After a recent #criplit chat I discovered that Submittable is not particularly accessible. If you have difficulties, please email Black Warrior Review directly. If you don’t get a satisfactory response please let me know here or via Twitter (@Nicolaz) and I’ll see what I can do.*)

* I apologise for the aspects of this site that are inaccessible. I plan to conduct an accessibility audit soon.