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Southwest Contemporary magazine is now accepting pitches for our Fall-Winter 2026-27 print issue—themed “Alien.”
We seek writers based in or closely connected to the North American Southwest to submit story ideas for our Fall-Winter 2026-27 issue, Volume 14: Alien. Pitches should be focused on contemporary artists working in the region who are grappling with political, social, psychic, and cosmic dimensions of the alien.
In Southwest Contemporary Volume 14, we will spotlight artists and projects exploring many questions about being, or feeling, alien.
Alienness is often felt intimately, in the body and in daily life—perhaps as estrangement from the self or others, or as a celebration of exquisite difference. What is it like to be an “outsider” or “other”? How does it feel to wholly embrace one’s uniqueness? What does it mean to be an invader, or invaded upon? What’s it like to be in a body that doesn’t belong—or finds a way home?
The concept of “the alien” has also served to divide the body politic. The Southwest border is an epicenter of one such narrative shaping culture, where authorities mark humans as “aliens”—as a class of legal and political “others,” subject to a dominant band of alien settlers and occupiers. But migration into unknown realms can also be transcendent—a process filled with curiosity, discovery, and unexpected connection.
The Southwest has long been a hotspot for alien activity. Star people and sky-beings animate Zuni, Hopi, and other oral traditions stretching back millennia. There are the energy “vortexes” in Sedona and the telescopes of the Very Large Array. Reported UFO encounters at Roswell and Area 51 have shaped the culture around government conspiracies. Now, actual portals to space have opened in the Southwest, commanded by billionaire founders. As reality starts to resemble science fiction, the genre’s fixations on escapism and encountering “the other” become mirrors on ourselves.
We encourage you to consider this theme in an expansive way. We want to cover artists who bring us into contact with other worlds and realities, who make the unknown known, celebrate difference, consider belonging, or combat loneliness.