Black Rock & Sage is open for submissions year round.

Each year’s issue deadline is February 14 at midnight Mountain time. For your work to be considered, you must be registered as an ISU student at time of submission. For summer submissions, you may instead be registered for classes the following Fall semester. See additional guidelines below.

We are looking for Idaho State University students’ unique, quality works, both experimental and traditional, that appeal to the eyes, ears, and minds of curious readers from all disciplines. Whatever your interests or emphasis of study, we want to publish your well-polished creative works.

We especially strive to magnify voices that are traditionally and systemically silenced. Writers and artists of color, queer and gender nonconforming writers, disabled writers, immigrant writers, and writers from other underrepresented communities: you are all welcome and wanted here. 

BR&S will consider previously unpublished fiction, poetry, plays, essays, memoirs, art, maps, schematics, musical performances, scores, and more. We are interested in creative genres familiar and unexpected alike. All submissions will be judged anonymously. We accept simultaneous submissions if notified. Eligible submissions will be considered for the BR&S Prose Prize and the Ford Swetnam Poetry Prize. See this page about our contests.

Submitting to Black Rock & Sage

Writers, from all departments at ISU 

1. Email your work as an attachment to brs@isu.edu.
2. Do not include your name anywhere in the body of the manuscript to ensure anonymity.
3. Include each piece as an attachment to your submission email. Accepted formats include .doc, .docx, and .rtf. Students can submit both poetry and prose.
4. Include your name, Bengal ID number, student status (undergraduate or graduate), major and minor (if applicable) or home department, email address, and approximately 50-word bio (written in the third person) in the body of the email. Please omit personal websites on your bio. Students must have a high school diploma or equivalent to submit.
5. Include individual piece titles, your name, and Bengal ID number in the subject line of your submission email.
6. Students can submit up to 3 prose pieces. The word count for any prose piece must not be over 5,000 words. Prose should be double-spaced with page numbers, 12-point standard font, 1-inch margins–unless experimental in nature.
7. Students can submit a maximum of 5 poems. Poetry should be single-spaced with only one poem per page. No one poem should be more than 10 pages.

At the time of acceptance for publication of your work, BR&S will request a photograph of you to be shared on our website and social media.

Visual and Graphic Artists, from all departments at ISU

1. The magazine includes numerous and varied pieces of visual art selected by appropriate Art Department or Mass Communication faculty members. Email your work as an attachment to brs@isu.edu.
2. Submit up to 10 visual work pieces as a 300-dpi .png, .tiff, or .jpeg in the cymk color scheme. Images should be 4.5″ wide x 6″ tall (1350 x 1800 pixels).
3. Include your name, Bengal ID number, student status (undergraduate or graduate), major and minor (if applicable) or home department, email address, and approximately 50-word bio (written in the third person) in the body of the email. Please omit personal websites from your bio.
4. Include individual piece titles, your name, and Bengal ID number in the subject line of your submission email.Please omit personal websites from your bio.
5. Students may submit their artwork sideways if they wish it to be displayed that way. Please list materials for art submissions. The file name for each image should be the name of the image. We have a limited number of color pages in the magazine, so please let us know if a submission could be considered for grayscale printing.

Please omit personal websites on your bio.

At the time of acceptance for publication of your work, BR&S will request a photograph of you to be shared on our website and social media.

Performers, from all departments at ISU –

1. For written pieces (screenplays, monologues, short plays, etc.), please follow the guidelines for writers listed above. For costume designs and other still-visual pieces, please follow the guidelines for visual artists listed above.
2. For performances submitted via video, the magazine will list the pieces selected by Theatre and Dance Department faculty members, and our website will link to their videos. Up to five video links may be submitted to brs@isu.edu (each no more than 10 minutes in length).
3. Include each piece as an attachment to your submission email.
4. Include your name, Bengal ID number, student status (undergraduate or graduate), major and minor (if applicable) or home department, email address, and approximately 50-word bio (written in the third person) in the body of the email. Please omit personal websites on your bio.
5. Include individual piece titles, your name, and Bengal ID number in the subject line of your submission email.
6. Performances, in any genre, may be of original work or of a piece by another artist/author, but please indicate if this is the case.

At the time of acceptance for publication of your work, BR&S will request a photograph of you to be shared on our website and social media.

Musicians, from all departments at ISU –

Each year the accepted music submissions are compiled into a BR&S album that’s made available on the BR&S Bandcamp page (See the BR&S music page on this website for links to past albums). The magazine publishes a full track list with composers and performers as well as all the musicians’ bios. Please omit personal websites on your bio. For those interested in submitting work, individual performances should be limited to seven minutes. Written scores will be considered for inclusion as visual art in the magazine. For more information, please contact Dr. Jonathan Armstrong in the Music Department (jonathanarmstrong@isu.edu). Click on Additional Information for Musical Performers to find the 2024-2025 music application form. These musical performances submissions often have a slightly later deadline; see each year’s application form.

At the time of acceptance for publication of your work, BR&S will request a photograph of you to be shared on our website and social media.

Staff submission guidelines: The BR&S editor-in-chief, genre editors, and managing editor may not publish work in the magazine. The assistant editors may submit to the journal but should do so by emailing their work to the faculty advisor. These submissions will be evaluated anonymously by the senior staff and the faculty advisor separate from rush meetings.

Please omit personal websites from your bio.

At the time of acceptance for publication of your work, BR&S will request a photograph of you to be shared on our website and social media.

If you have any questions please view our frequently asked questions or contact the editors at brs@isu.edu.