Black Warrior Review, an entirely student-run literary publication in The University of Alabama’s English department, is one of five national magazines to receive a 2019 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize from the Whiting Foundation.
The BWR is receiving a Print Development Grant for a review with a budget less than $50,000. The editorial staff will receive an outright grant of $5,000 in 2019 with an additional matching grant of up to $5,000 per year for the following two years.
“This year’s team has chosen to direct this year’s outright grant money toward putting out an additional issue of BWR’s online issue, Boyfriend Village, named in honor of beloved former BWR editor Zach Doss, who passed away last year,” said current managing editor Jackson Saul. “Future teams will decide what to direct the funds toward in the coming years, but under consideration are standalone chapbooks, higher contributor pay, a revamped website, and a more accessible submissions process, with lower or eliminated fees.”
Saul said the award honored the 2018 editorial team, headed by previous editor Cat Ingrid Leeches.
“Full of elegance and grit, fluidity and resolve, Black Warrior Review is a singular beacon for adventurous writing that shines forth from Alabama,” the Whiting Foundation judges wrote. “This journal brings together what is gorgeous and necessary in literature today, treating each piece it publishes as an act of optimistic revolution. Black Warrior Review dissolves convention and leaves possibility in its place.”
Founded in 1974, BWR is the oldest continuously run literary journal by graduate students in the United States. The review publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics and art twice a year. Contributors include Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners alongside emerging writers. Work appearing in the review has been reprinted in the Pushcart Prize series, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize, New Stories from the South and other anthologies.