The Brooklyn Review BIPOC Mentorship Contest

The Brooklyn Review is holding a contest to offer mentorship to BIPOC writers of Poetry and Fiction. All work submitted to the competition will be considered for publication. One winner from each genre will receive mentorship for three months, the inclusion of their work in our upcoming print issue (#36) along with a complementary copy, and an invitation to read at our book launch party in the Spring. 

This contest is for BIPOC writers who have never been in an MFA program and have not published a book or chapbook with a publisher. People who have only published works in journals, contributed to greater collections, or self-published are eligible. 

Please do not send work that has already been published. Simultaneous submissions are okay, but let us know if they are accepted elsewhere. We are accepting submissions from qualified BIPOC writers from now until January 18th. Please entitle your submission with your name and the genre of your work (ex. Sonam Lama Fiction) and email it to: BKRmentorship@gmail.com

Poets: Please submit three of your finest poems. 

Fiction Writers: Please submit a novel excerpt, a short story or multiple short stories totaling no more than 6,000 words.  

Fiction mentor bio:

Madeleine Thien (traditional Chinese: 鄧敏靈; simplified Chinese: 邓敏灵; born 1974) is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic Asian communities. Thien’s critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General’s Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.

Poetry mentor bio:

Mónica de la Torre poems explore our constructions of identity and trajectory. Her full-length poetry collections include Repetition Nineteen (2020), The Happy End / All Welcome (2017), Four (2012), and  Public Domain (2008). With artist Terence Gower, she co-authored the art book Appendices, Illustrations and Notes (1999). De la Torre coedited with Alex Balgiu, the anthology Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979 (2020), and with Michael Wiegers, the bilingual anthology Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (2002). She has co-edited translations from Spanish including Lila Zemborain’s Mauve Sea-Orchids (2007) and Poems by Gerardo Deniz (2000). De la Torre’s honors include a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She has edited BOMB Magazine and the Brooklyn Rail. She lives in Brooklyn.

Timeline:

December – January 18th  – Accepting submissions

February – Winners will be contacted.

March, April, May – Mentorship period.