Submissions for the 2024-2025 academic year will close on December 31.

Academic Essays

The Birch is a forum for undergraduates to publish scholarly essays. These can be adapted from original research projects, class papers, and senior theses. Please limit your submissions to the print journal no more than two essays, each no more than 4000 words (not including footnotes). Citations should be done in MLA style (in-text citation and bibliography). When submitting your essay, please indicate what section of the journal you are submitting to:

• Culture and History: essays on popular culture, history, film, the arts, etc.

• Literary Criticism: essays on literature or philosophy

• Politics: essays on current events, geopolitics, economics, and religion

Creative Writing/Art and Photography

This section is a forum for students to publish poems, short stories, excerpts from novels, creative nonfiction pieces, memoirs, and more. We also accept photography, graphics and other kinds of artistic reflections related to the region. For creative writing submissions, please limit your annual submissions to no more than two prose pieces or three poems, each no more than 4,000 words long. Authors should include at least one paragraph explaining how their piece is related to Eastern Europe, Central Europe, or Eurasia.

Translations

This section is a forum for students to publish translations of poetry and prose. For translation submissions, please limit your annual submissions to no more than three pieces, each no more than 4000 words long.

Translations should be between English and a language spoken in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia (either to or from the language). We will publish both the translation and original adjacent to one another, so please include the original piece and a citation for it when submitting translations. All translations must be original.

All submissions for the print edition which are not selected will be considered for online publication.

Submission Requirements

• All contributors must be current undergraduates at accredited universities

• Each submission may be no more than 4,000 words in length

• Do not include your name or institution on the submitted work to facilitate blind reads

• Submit all entries as word documents, formatted in 12 pt. Times New Roman font and 1.5 spacing

• For academic essays, please use MLA in-text citations and bibliography

• All submissions must not have been previously published and should not be considered for publication elsewhere

• Students who have their work accepted should be willing and able to participate in our editorial process during the spring semester

• Pieces should not be submitted for both print and online review