Black Napkin Press was founded on the principle of powerful poetry that explodes out of its writer, poetry that demands to be written. We want your experimental, we want your provocative, your queer (in every sense of the word), your irreverent and your holy, we want the poems that you need in the world. We are searching for narratives that disrupt the mainstream image of poetry. While each of the editors has their own specific tastes, we tend to value feeling over form. We like poetry that carries an ache (even a joyful one), poetry that punches you in the heart and leaves you with the taste of blood on your teeth.

​We are committed to the principles of inclusive & diverse writing/publishing. This means that we actively seek work from writers/artists of marginalized identities. Please submit to us if you are a person of color, a queer or trans person, a disabled person, a woman/femme/nonbinary person, a neurodivergent person, an asexual/aromantic person, an immigrant, an undocumented person, a trauma survivor, an atheist/agnostic/or member of a non-christian religion, or any other person that is often underrepresented in media.  Your voices are important, we want to make them heard.

Our magazine is published quarterly in March, June, September, & December. Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to be a paying market.