Birdcoat Quarterly's open call for creative nonfiction is an invitation to writers for whom the essay is not a vehicle of explanation but a site of inquiry. The editors state a preference for work that experiments with form and language, complicates a subject rather than settling it, and resists the consolations of certainty. The lyric essay, as they conceive it, is expansive and evolving; what unites the work they seek is a willingness to meander through time, to introduce humor and paradox, and to leave things unsaid. The parameters are deliberately generous. A writer may submit one essay of up to 3,750 words, or as many as five related short essays within that same total limit. This structure accommodates both the sustained lyric meditation and the sequence or series—forms in which fragmentation, recurrence, and adjacency do their own argumentative work. There is no stated prize and no geographic restriction; the call is for the work itself, and the terms of publication are those of the journal. A submission fee of $3.00 (USD) applies. The deadline is November 1, 2026. The editors' stated disinterest in essays that merely inform or document is itself a curatorial position: they are looking for writing that brings the reader to a threshold and incites conversation, not writing that closes a question. Writers should read the full guidelines on the journal's submission page before sending work.