Boudin: The Spicy Online Cousin of The McNeese Review
Boudin, the Spicy Online Cousin ofThe McNeese Review, features fiction and poetry, but welcomes hybrids and other forms of creative work. Recent issues have featured Angela Ball, Michael Czyzniejewski, MIchael Martone, Richard Peabody, Meg Pokrass, Sam Ruddick, and Lee Upton. Read more here.
In all genres, we are particularly interested in seeing work from women, people of color, LGBTQ writers, non-binary writers, people with disabilities, and other underrepresented groups.
_______
Submitting to Boudin
No material published in Boudin may be reprinted or reproduced, in whole or in part, without the permission of the authors. Writers retain all rights to their work. We ask only that Boudin be credited with first publication. Unfortunately, we are not a paying market; contributors to Boudin will receive our thanks and the promise that we’ll promote your work.
We encourage you to simultaneously submit your work while it’s under consideration at Boudin. If your submission is accepted by another publication, please email boudin@mcneese.edu to withdraw your work.
Please only submit original work. Let us know if your writing borrows from or quotes another writer.
We are now proud members of CLMP!
The McNeese Review Issue 61 (2024) is available for purchase! Back issues, as well as 2-Year, 3-Year, & 5-Year Subscriptions, are also available.
Guest Editor: Meilyn Woods
In celebration of Black History Month, Boudin is looking for prose, poetry, CNF, and hybrid work from historically underrepresented writers. We are open to all writing but are particularly interested in the idea of surveillance. What systems exist that make us feel like we are being watched, examined, and perceived? How do those eyes affect the way we view ourselves?
Deadline February 15th, 2025. No fee! Aim to keep the fiction/CNF under 5,000 or so words. You may submit up to three poems/microfictions (under 500 words).
Thank you for your interest in Boudin's Second Annual Pet Writing contest! $7 entry fee; all proceeds will be donated to Do Good Dogs and Hobo Hotel for Cats rescues in Lake Charles, LA.
The winner will receive a $50 prize. The winner and one of the runner-ups will be offered the opportunity to serve as final guest judges for our third annual contest in 2026.
Boudin is looking for your best fiction, CNF, poetry, and hybrid work about pets. Our staff will read and decide upon the final ten, which will then be read blind by Lucinda Kempe and Mark Williams (2024's runner-up and winner).
Deadline March 7th, 2025. Aim to keep the fiction/CNF under 5,000 or so words. You may submit up to three poems/microfictions (under 500 words each) on one document. You may submit as many times as you like but must pay the entry fee for each submission.
Blooms in Dusk--April (Guest Editor Jade Turner)
Ahh, Spring. April is a marker that the Spring season is in full swing, and as greeting cards tend to remind us, Spring is for new beginnings; for hope; for renewal. Although uplifting, these positive associations with the season are, in themselves, romanticized ideals. This April's issue is interested in pieces that diverge from the typical images of a hopeful, shining Spring and self, and instead, turn toward exploring and expressing that which the season inherently shuns and attempts to sanitize with its annual appearance. Think of this issue as a call to resurrect the suppressed self. Pieces can touch on any aesthetic or form as they give voice to the stifled feelings or impulses that withstand that sanitization. Instead of inhaling the refreshing air of Spring, let us take a moment to rebelliously hold our breath, then inhale the sinking feeling in the air. After all, things grow in the dark, too.
Deadline April 1st, 2025. No fee! Aim to keep the fiction/CNF/hybrids under 5,000 or so words. You may submit up to three poems/microfictions (under 500 words). We are also interested in visual art on this theme.
2025 Boudin Flash Fiction Chapbook Contest
Final judge: Roxane Gay
Deadline: April 15th, 2025
Prizes: The winner will receive $1,000, 25 author copies, an author-signing at AWP 2026, inclusion of one or more pieces in The McNeese Review’s 2026 issue, promotion in monthly issues of Boudin (“the spicy online cousin of The McNeese Review”), and a three-year subscription to The McNeese Review. The winning manuscript will be published as a special issue of The McNeese Review and distributed by TRP: The University Press of SHSU.
Two runners-up will be offered publication of individual pieces in a monthly issue of Boudin, and will receive a three-year subscription to The McNeese Review.
Fee: $15
Manuscript details: 25-40 manuscript pages of flash fiction (no more than one piece per page) in a readable font like 12-point Times New Roman. It's fine if some of the individual works have been published elsewhere (aside from Boudin or The McNeese Review), but the manuscript can't have been published as a whole. Please acknowledge these publications in your cover letter, but not in your manuscript. Include only a title page and a table of contents.
Your name and contact info should NOT appear anywhere on the manuscript. Please include a cover letter and third-person bio on the Submittable submission form, and acknowledge any individual pieces of the chapbook that have been published elsewhere.
Judging: The first round will be read anonymously by McNeese State University’s MFA faculty and students. The final round will be read anonymously by Roxane Gay, who will determine the winner and two runners-up.
Roxane Gay is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), as well as the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and the memoir Hunger (2017).
Other: Co-authored manuscripts are fine. Submitting multiple manuscripts is fine with entry fees for each. Simultaneous submissions are fine; please withdraw immediately through Submittable if your work is accepted elsewhere. Please note that the AWP author signing will take place at the Boudin/McNeese Review booth, and does not include travel expenses.