Yawp
Theme: Yawp
Overview: Inspired by Walt Whitman’s “barbaric yawp,” this theme asks what it means to call out into the vastness, whether that vastness is the natural world, society, history, or the self.
A yawp is not polite. It is not curated. It is the unfiltered sound of being alive.
What do you scream into the void?
What answers, if any, echo back?
Is your yawp a protest, a prayer, a confession, a warning?
What happens when the void doesn’t answer—or refuses to let the sound through?
We’re looking for work that is raw, urgent, and unafraid. We want pieces that resist containment and speak from the gut, but also pieces that understand pressure: the forces that distort, muffle, or silence.
Show us voices that rupture silence.
Show us what they collide with.
Show us what remains.