The Capilano Review is pleased to invite submissions to our Fall 2025 Writing Contest, “Connective | Uncontainable,” guest-judged by Hari Alluri. Submissions are open November 11 – December 12, 2025.

These are times—again, ongoing—in which so many of us are forced into existences and lives that harm us. And borders, their inherent falsity is why they are such overpoliced things: the binary of belonging must be constantly reinforced. And here a river overflows its banks constantly: every evaporated drop exceeds the category of the body it was named within. Alive means filled with so many desires to become uncontainable: modes of connective relationships that reach across, above, beneath.

Maybe we are in need of initiations, intimacies, and intonations that exceed their own categories. Maybe also remembrances of pasts, presents, and futures that rebel, invoking transformative relations to earth, each other, and spirit.

This call especially invites work that connects against expectations, that refuses the regulation of your identities / subject positions / experiences / writing itself, that connects beneath the surface of social, cultural, interpersonal and beyond-human relationships, that ascends towards possibilities beyond this world. If you’re infuriated by this call for work, maybe your work is calling you to send it in.

About the Judge

Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is the author of three poetry collections and two chapbooks, co-editor of several anthologies, and project editor for recently authored and forthcoming collections. A former Writer-in-Residence at The Capilano Review and one of the current mentors for the League of Canadian Poets P.K. Page Mentorship Program, siya is a recipient of the Vera Manuel Award for Poetry and the Leonard A. Slade, Jr. Poetry Fellowship, as well as grants and fellowships from the BC Arts Council, Canada Council, National Film Board, and Writers’ Union of Canada, among others. Recent collaborations include Aray YAAR Collective, Burnaby Art Gallery, Centre A, The Digital Sala, Filipino Canadian Book Festival, Gulf Islands Poetry Festival, Indian Summer Festival, Vancouver Poetry House, Write, Create, Transform in Crete, and many more. You can connect with his work through anthologies, journals, online venues—most recently in I’ll Get Right On It: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis (Fernwood Publishing), Wildness, and Poetry Pause—and more immersively in The Flayed City (Kaya Press), Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press), and Tabako on the Windowsill (Brick Books).

Contest Details 

Submission period: November 11 – December 12, 2025

Submit your work via Submittable

Work must be original and previously unpublished

Submit up to 6 pages of poetry, prose, or other short experimental forms (PDF or Word formats only)

All entries will be considered anonymously. Please do not include your name or other identifying fields on your manuscript pages

Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted for publication elsewhere so that we can remove your entry from the contest

International entries are accepted

The winner will receive a $500 cash prize and publication in an upcoming print issue of The Capilano Review.

Submission Fees

$25 submission fee for all entries.

Submission fees include a complimentary one-year digital subscription to The Capilano Review.

The submission fee is waived for Indigenous entrants and those for whom the cost is a barrier. Please email contact@thecapilanoreview.com directly for alternate instructions to submit your work.

Ready to submit? 

Upload your work via Submittable here.

The winner will be announced in January 2026.