Briarpatch Magazine — Writing in the Margins
Before you apply
About this call
"Writing in the Margins" is a contest organized by Briarpatch Magazine and open to submissions from the United States and globally. Its scope spans three forms, creative nonfiction, poetry, and documentary photography, and the call is organized around a shared concern for the peripheral, the overlooked, and the documentary record of lived experience. Rather than treating these disciplines as separate categories, the contest places them in deliberate proximity, framing each as a different instrument for the same act of attention. The contest's organizing premise is that the margins are not a neutral location. Work that attends to what has been left out of dominant accounts requires both witness and formal invention, and the call positions practitioners who operate across the boundary between testimony and expression as its intended audience. The available materials do not specify the prizes, the fee structure, or the full guidelines, so the substance of any award and the terms of entry cannot be described here. What is confirmed is the institutional context of Briarpatch Magazine and the thematic framing of the call. Prospective entrants should treat this dossier as an orientation rather than a complete statement of terms. The eligibility criteria, formatting specifications, and fee have not been disclosed in the information available to us, and these should be verified directly with the organization's official call before any work is prepared or submitted.
What to send
Limit: up to 2,000 words
Limit: up to 2 pages
Limit: 1 to 7 photos, plus one artist statement (up to 350 words) or captions (up to 50 words each)