Vol. 1
WRITE TO RETURN
Open for submissions until August 25th, 2026
a living archive where BIPOC voices are reclaimed and preserved.
JOIN AN ENDURING RECORD OF OUR IDENTITIES, CULTURES, AND HISTORIES.
25
SELECTED WORKS WILL FORM THE FOUNDATION OF PROHIBITION PRESS' INAUGURAL VOLUME
THE INVITATION
We’re calling on established and emerging BIPOC and immigrant writers, artists, and storytellers to submit their best work.
Submit a poem, essay, short fiction, creative nonfiction, visual art, or experimental work.
This inaugural volume will include a curated selection of:
Poems
15
Essays or short stories
05
visual artworks (digital media or fine art)
05
THE THEME
We're looking for work that confronts erasure, displacement, cultural silencing, and the contradictions of belonging.
Share your story in a form that resists polished silence. Let your work disrupt the cadence of assimilation.
We aren’t looking for decor. We’re looking for detonations, fragments, stutters and brazen refusals of comfort.
We won’t bleach the page.
Because we don’t survive through the polite syntax of compliance.
RIGHTS STAY WITH YOU. ALWAYS.
You retain full ownership of your work.
We don’t take rights, and we don’tt claim control over your writing or art.
If your work appears elsewhere now or in the future, that’s fine, just let us know so we can credit it accurately.
SELECTED CONTRIBUTORS RECEIVE:
✓ Publication in Anthology No. 1
✓ One complimentary contributor copy
✓ Ongoing royalties from sales
✓ Official Founding Contributor status
THE RECEIPTS
You’ll get paid if your work is selected for publication.
We believe the people creating the work should share in its success.
All revenue first covers direct publishing costs: printing, fulfillment, distribution, payment processing, and ISBN registration.
After publication expenses are recovered:
80%
→ CONTRIBUTORS
20%
→ PROHIBITION PRESS
We will, literally, share the receipts.
NO GHOSTING
We won’t keep you waiting.
You can expect a response within 1–2 weeks of submission, whether your work is selected or not.
If your work isn’t selected, we won’t send a cold automated rejection and call it a day.
We’ll tell you why it didn’t make this issue. We’ll tell you what worked, what didn’t, and we’ll invite you back.
ANSWER THE CALL
We read every submission ourselves.
They don’t want it printed.
So let’s make sure it is.