Denver Quarterly, the literary journal housed at the University of Denver, has opened its cover art contest for the first time to the university's own creative community. The call is expressly institutional in scope: it is limited to current DU students at any level and to alumni who have graduated within the past three years. This is not a general open call but a deliberate effort to foreground work emerging from a specific academic milieu, and the journal's framing—'to celebrate the innovative and creative community at DU'—signals that the selection will be read in conversation with the university's broader artistic output. Four pieces will be chosen to appear on the covers of issues published during 2026–27. Selected artists receive publication of their work and a complimentary one-year subscription to the journal. There is no submission fee. Artists may submit between one and five pieces of visual art, and works are accepted as-is; the journal states plainly that revisions of any kind will not be accepted. Simultaneous submissions are permitted, provided the journal is notified immediately if a work is selected elsewhere. The curatorial vision here is shaped by the journal's long-standing literary identity and by the practical constraints of cover reproduction. Denver Quarterly has historically favored visual work that holds its own on a printed cover—work with a strong compositional armature, a distinct material or chromatic presence, and the capacity to reward sustained looking rather than merely illustrate the contents within. Artists should consider that the selected images will function as the public face of individual issues, and that the jury will likely be attentive to how a given piece reads at cover scale and in relation to the journal's typographic and design conventions.