The B’K Magazine (The B’K) is an art and literature magazine prioritizing and paying traditionally marginalized creators, but open to all.

The B’K is proudly edited by Chris Talbot, a mixed-race, autistic, queer, and trans nonbinary editor.

We require written submissions to be under 2,000 words for prose or five pages for poetry, submitted in a Word Document or text file. PDFs will not be considered and will be rejected outright. Submissions must be in English as, unfortunately, that is the only language we can read. Do feel free to add words in a language other than English and we will consult Google or other resources, but the submission must be primarily in English.

We require that image submissions be sent at least 300 dpi and at least 3 inches by 3 inches (if you would like your piece to be considered for the cover, it must be sized at least 8.75 inches width and/or 11.25 inches height ). We do not accept AI-generated work as it doesn’t fit in our definition of own voices. By submitting your work, you confirm that the artwork is yours and yours alone, does not make use of images that are not your own (or if you do use images that are not your own, they are royalty-free and do not constitute the bulk of the submission), and was not AI-generated.

We require that you properly gender our editor. Any submission that misgenders will be responded to unread. If you wish to address the editor, you can do so as editor, The B’K Magazine, The B’K, or Chris. If you wish to speak about our editor, they use the pronouns they/them.

We will accept simultaneous submissions. Please let us know if it is a simultaneous submission (in the “Anything you want our editors to know about your piece” section of the form) and let us know as soon as you do if it has been accepted elsewhere.

Our form requires the following information: your name as you’d like it to appear, the name of the piece as you’d like it to appear, trigger warnings if necessary, and answers to our identity questions.

We aim to have a diverse publication from a diverse set of voices. In order to make sure we do that, we need to know who you are. We will not deny someone based on identity unless it is deemed that the submission becomes inappropriate or appropriation due to the submitter’s identity. Things that we would consider inappropriate or appropriation would include writing about what it’s like to be part of a historically marginalized community you do not belong to. We encourage people outside of the community to include people from historically marginalized communities, but we won’t publish pieces that explain what it’s like to be part of those communities. We value inclusivity and believe the only way to do it right is with #OwnVoices.

We don’t want to read something that might be triggering without being in the right head space. We would hate to deny something because it caught us off guard at a bad time. If appropriate, please include a trigger warning. Before you submit, make sure that it will not violate our submission guidelines (see the full list below).

These are the things that will be rejected and could get you temporarily or permanently banned from The B’K and All My Relations.

If your submission violates any of the guidelines below, you will be informed and temporarily banned from submitting for one month’s time. A rejection for violating a guideline is not the start of an argument. You don’t have to agree with our guidelines, but if you choose to submit to our publication, you have to follow our rules.

The temporary ban is as much for submitters as it is for us. We want to make sure that we are reviewing your submission with an open mind, and can’t do that if you are rapid firing “proof” that you can write something else.

If it is a flagrant violation or you argue with us or respond aggressively to a rejection for any reason, you will be permanently banned.

Likewise, even if your submissions to us are not problematic, but we are informed of problematic behavior outside of our publication against people from marginalized communities and can verify it, you will not be welcome to our publication and we reserve the right to remove your work from past issues.

• The piece implicates you in a crime.
• The piece is partially or fully plagiarized. This includes work that is AI-generated (AI is plagiarism — it copies existing works from existing creatives without their permission.) or the majority/focus of the piece makes use of images that were not created by you (examples: photographs of murals — yes, you took the photograph, but the focus is on someone else’s mural; collages where the collage pieces have not been radically altered and are therefore someone else’s work).
• The piece uses fridging of marginalized people or children (the trope where a marginalized person is injured, killed, or demoralized in some way to move a privileged person’s story or character development forward).
• The piece reduces people from marginalized genders or races to body parts, objects, or in another way dehumanizes them.
• The piece’s main focus is sexual attraction or exploitation.
• The piece is erotica or is sexually explicit.
• The piece sexualizes a child. This means anyone under 18 years old, no matter what.
• The piece glorifies or sexualizes violence against marginalized genders.
• The piece mentions or implies molestation, sexual assault, or r*pe
  • There is NO wiggle room on this. Our editor is a survivor and will not subject themself to the pain of reading this.
  • Any violation of this guideline will result in an instant permanent ban from our publication. The trauma is too great and therapy is too expensive to deal with this.
• The piece includes content or slurs that could be considered racist, xenophobic, queerphobic, transphobic, sexist, misogynistic, fetishist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, ableist, audistic, or in any other way offensive to a protected class or minority. Your piece will be rejected unless it is made clear within the piece or in an artist statement at the end that the behavior/language is unacceptable, proper content warnings are provided, and the word is in some way censored in the piece (vowels replaced with * as an example we’ve accepted). While I understand that some people are reclaiming words that have been used to disparage people that share an identity, not all our readers from that identity will be reclaiming that word and we need to think of their well-being as well.