Guest Editor: Chris Abani

This special issue focuses on the creative outputs by Africans from as many parts of the continent and direct diaspora as we can curate. Every few years, an anthology of African writing appears and attempts a representation that always collapses under the sheer expanse of that continent and then disappears. Our aim with this special issue is not to collect around a specific theme or historical moment, but to curate a series of engagements and provocations from all over the continent and its direct diaspora. We want to keep the door of engagement open for the creatives who end up in this issue such that opportunities for continued interactions and engagement arise. 

We seek all points of view—reclamation, disruption, speculation, criticism, experimental and more traditional approaches, creative scholarship, queer, immigrant, multi-lingual pieces; in other words: no limits. We impose no ideologies or fixed approaches but would like work from less visible literatures—Hausa literatures, for example. If you receive this call and email and/or internet access is a problem, we can offer you other methods of submitting.

This issue will be published in April of 2024. 

Maximum length for articles, essays and works of fiction is 7,000 words. Poetry submissions must not exceed 10 pages (or comparable length for other genres). All work should be formatted such that it can be printed on 6” x 9” pages. Incorporation of graphics is permitted; however, we cannot guarantee that any work will be printed in color. 

All material submitted will be considered simultaneously for publication in MQR Online. If Submittable is not accessible to you, please email mqr@umich.edu or contact (734) 764-9265 with your concern.