The White Savior Review is a biannual literary journal showcasing the best writing from people of color and from indigenous underrepresented groups. We want fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cross-genre, and shit carved on flutes. We want people from obscure backgrounds that we accidentally thought were tribes from Game of Thrones. Maybe editors told you that they didn’t connect with the Colombian transgender protagonist in your short story. Maybe you were in workshops and people stopped reading your piece because they didn’t know what a durian tasted like. Well, we know what a fucking durian is. Because we googled it. And we went to find our Cambodian grocer, Davuth, and fact-checked it. And now, we want your voices for our journal!

Our journal started one fateful night, when a bunch of us were downing PBRs at our favorite watering hole, The Crying Thistle. We were angry that the publishing industry was 90 percent white. This limited the amount of strong work produced from writers of color. But the problem was we didn’t know how we could help. So, we illegally downloaded a handful of movies that we knew of that included people of color. For the next fourteen hours, we pored over movies like The Help, Freedom Writers, Gran Torino, and 12 Years a Slave.

And let’s just say our eyes were opened. There was one consistent thread that made these blockbusters shine.

The white savior.

That’s when we got to thinking. Hey! We’re white! And we all voted for Obama! Twice! We should do something to help the literary downtrodden.

And that’s how The White Savior Review was born.

Come take a gander at our sleek website. Yes, our masthead has a hefty list of white men and women. You may notice that there are three editors that coincidentally have the same name: Logan. This might make you speculative and feel a readership like this won’t “get” your writing. Let us assure you we do. Most of us took at least one World Literature class in undergrad. And half of us had one person of color in our writing workshops. A few of us even workshopped with two minorities in our classes!

Still worried about the homogenous readership? We have recently hired Diego, our intern, to help us read the large piles of work that comes in. Diego’s family illegally immigrated to the United States from Mexico, and we were so impressed by Diego, that we offered him an unpaid internship with our journal. He will be one of the first pairs of eyes on your work, and even though he’s decided to major in Accounting at his university, he is our gatekeeper so we can bring in the writing from those underrepresented voices.

Here are some guidelines to determine if you are eligible to submit.

  • If you utter the phrase “my people,” please submit.
  • If you have had your name brutally mispronounced by white people on several occasions, please submit.
  • If you have ever been singled out to meet Cathy’s son’s new girlfriend because her family comes from the same country as you do and therefore, you will somehow have this as common ground to talk to each other, please submit.
  • If people have taken land from you or your ancestors under reasons like “manifest destiny,” please submit.
  • If you have ancestry from a culture with an art wing that no one ever wanders into, please submit.
  • More attention will be given to writers who are underrepresented for multiple things. If we get poetry from an Inuit Alaskan woman who is genderqueer and has no legs, that goes to the top of our list.

As of right now, we cannot pay our contributors. We are a small journal run in a basement. But publication in our journal will give you exposure! Exposure on the shoulders of white Logans! So send us your most marginalized writing! Diego can’t wait to read it!