Southwest Contemporary magazine is now accepting pitches for our Fall-Winter 2025-26 print issue—themed “OBSESSION.”
Obsession. I’m OBSESSED.
For Southwest Contemporary Volume 12, we want to hear all about your obsessions. What drives your passion? What’s stuck in your head? What can’t you keep your hands off of? What’s your Roman Empire?
In an attention-based economy, an obsession is a gold mine. You can fall down a rabbit hole, and suddenly you’re hooked.
An obsession can be a strong passion, a deep desire to consume, to know, to do, or to own. It can feel like love, the heart-fluttering longing of a crush. But obsessions can veer into darker territory: fetishizations, compulsions, fixations. The art world has long been driven by obsessions—of artists and of collectors—by the drive to create and the drive to possess.
In this issue, we’ll take deep dives into niche topics. We’ll dig into artists’ obsessions with physical materials, processes, ideas, and research. We’ll talk about the fascination that drives the impulse to collect and to create.
What obsessions are particular to the Southwest region?
We invite pitches for print articles related to this theme in the form of:
- Studio visits/artist profiles (800 words).
- Reporting (1200–2000 words).
- Features (1200–2000 words).
- Creative essays (400–700 words).
- Interviews (500–2000 words).
- Cultural criticism (1200–2000 words).
- Short fiction (400–700 words).
- Experimental text-based works (~up to 2000 words).
- Food and drink/art-travel writing (1200–1500 words).
- Reviews (exhibitions reviews should be timely and therefore do not need to adhere to the theme) (300 words).
- (Please note we do not accept submissions of poetry).
Pitch Submission Guidelines
All pitches must be submitted through this form. Please do not email pitches.
Pro tip: Read our pitch guidelines before you submit!
New to Southwest Contemporary? If you haven’t yet written for Southwest Contemporary, please share 1-2 writing samples with your submission. Writing samples need not be published.
New to arts writing? Please pitch us anyway! We seek a diverse range of voices, perspectives, and rhetorical styles. We believe both established and aspiring writers are capable of making valuable contributions to SWC, and our goal is to empower each writer to hone their writing skills and cultivate their own unique voice.
If your pitch is accepted and SWC commissions a story, you can expect to work closely and collaboratively with arts editor Natalie Hegert throughout the editorial process.
Fees: All contributors are compensated and articles commissioned for print will be paid according to article length and type (essay, feature, review, etc). The fee will be agreed upon at the time of commission, and typically range from $100 to $500.
You are welcome to submit more than one pitch, but please make a separate submission for each story idea.
Timeline
Deadline for OBSESSION print pitches: Monday, May 5, 2025.
Deadline for drafts: fall in mid to late June.
Issue published: September 2025.
Questions?
Contact Natalie Hegert, arts editor, at natalie@southwestcontemporary.com.
