Participants in the Arts Writing Incubator meet to discuss their projects incubating black arts writing, sharpening our understanding of the practice of conversation and community.
Apply — The Arts Writing Incubator
We welcome applicants to the 2026 Arts Writing Incubator!
How does a publishing practice enacted within the fascist state manifest itself? What conditions are needed for the circulation of (cultural) knowledges that disrupt and/or interrupt dominant bureaucratic narratives? What new tools do we need to cultivate as writers, editors or publishers responding to art as we witness cultural sectors dismantled globally? These questions act as points of departure for this year's iteration of the BES Arts Writing Incubator.
With an awareness of current and intersecting geopolitical catastrophes, the Incubator aims to imagine and enact the futures of arts writing. The Incubator intends to grapple with how (if at all) we tether our relationships to art/culture to other organizing modalities in public and private ways. Workshops are thus varied in form and content, from investigating archival research methods and practicing radical publishing techniques rooted in paper ephemera to examining digital methodologies.
By thinking critically about methods, this program will think about how to articulate the political stakes of our work such that we are able to further constitute the publics we wish to engage with our work.
Who Should Apply
Unlike previous iterations of the Incubator, the 2026 run is not intended for people to cultivate their own writing practices per se. Applications are instead open to writers, publishers, and cultural workers who are currently or will soon be stewarding projects that incubate the work of others. We mean “projects” in an expansive sense, to incorporate print publications, platforms, organizations, newsletters, outlets, social media accounts, etc. that produce and circulate arts critical thinking.
We are interested in receiving applications from throughout the U.S. — particularly in regions like the southwest, south, and midwest — and those living and working elsewhere throughout North America or beyond these borders. Six applicants will be selected for participation. The incubator will meet about once a month, virtually, between January 2026 and May 2026. There will be a weekend-long, in-person convening in Seattle in April.
Selected participants will receive a $1,000 honorarium and expenses for in-person convening in Seattle will be covered.
Application Details
To apply, please submit a two-page letter of interest describing yourself and your critical practice and introducing your project, and detailing why this Incubator will be useful to you now. If your project is up and running, please embed links or include additional pages to document your work. If project is in the idea stage, please include clear and concrete description of scope and plans for the next year(s). If your project is somewhere in between, show us what you can.
Application materials should be compiled in PDF format and submitted using this hyperlinked Google Form by 11:59 pm PST, December 1.
Applicants will be notified of their acceptance into the Incubator by December 22, 2025. Our organizational capacity unfortunately makes it impossible to respond with individual feedback on applications.
Contact BES Editor-in-Residence Jessica Lynne at jessica@blackembodiments.org for any questions.