Callaloo

Callaloo is now accepting submissions for inclusion in an upcoming special issue on the theme “Black Appalachia: Past, Present, and Future,” guest edited by Crystal Wilkinson. We especially invite essays, critical articles, fiction, poetry, interviews, drama, and visual art on all facets of the Black Appalachian/Black Rural experience—present, historical, and future. Full details are provided below and on our website on our updated Submission Guidelines (https://www.callalooliteraryjournal.com/submission-guidelines) page.

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Luke Hankins & Charles Holm Managing Editors Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters

The Hopkins Press Journals Ethics and Malpractice Statement can be found at the ethics-and-malpractice page.

Callaloo Peer Review Policy

Callaloo, founded in 1976 by its reigning editor, Charles Henry Rowell,is the premier literary and cultural journal of the African Diaspora. Sponsored by Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, and published five times a year by Johns Hopkins University Press in Baltimore, Maryland, Callalooserves to exhibit, preserve, critique, and promote African Diaspora literary and visual culture. For nearly forty years, Callaloo has showcased original work by and about writers and visual artists of African descent worldwide, offering an engaging mixture of fiction, poetry, critical articles, inter­views, drama, and visual art. With the addition of Callaloo Art, journal subscrib­ers now receive a fifth issue each year that is devoted to African Diaspora visual art and culture. Volumes of Callaloo include Special Issues or Special Sections within issues that are devoted to a single author or topic. Guest Editors are invited to work alongside the Editor and his staff to help with the publication of these projects. Previous Special Issues and Special Sections have covered authors and topics such as Édouard Glissant, Hip-Hop Music and Cul­ture, Ben Okri, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Ethio­pia: Literature, Art, and Culture, and the Neo-Slave Narrative Genre.

Callaloo accepts original submissions of scholarly articles, book reviews, interviews, nonfiction essays, short fiction, poetry, drama, and visual art. Please see our author’s guidelines for details: https://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/callaloo/author-guidelines. All scholarly and creative submissions are sent out for blind review by experts in the fields of African Diaspora literature and culture. 

All submissions made to the journal are considered final drafts. In order to honor our publisher's production schedule, manuscripts accepted for publication in Callaloo must be forwarded to our Production Editor immediately, allowing contributors no time to make revisions. Before submitting a manuscript, contributors should be sure that the manuscript being uploaded is the version to appear in print. Please do not send revisions during the time a manuscript is being reviewed; those revisions will not be considered during the review process. Throughout the calendar year, authors who have submitted manuscripts to Callaloomay track the status of their submissions at any time. Authors will be contacted after the review process, which takes from two months to one year, on average.

Manuscripts submitted to Callalooshould not be currently under review by another journal or by a book-length publication. We do not accept simultaneous submissions. Moreover, we do not accept any unsolicited material that has been previously published.

Black Appalachia: Past, Present, and Future

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: October 31, 2023

Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, invites submissions for a special issue on being Black and Appalachian, guest edited by Crystal Wilkinson (University of Kentucky). This issue invites essays, critical articles, fiction, poetry, interviews, drama, and visual art. We seek work that speaks to all facets of the Black Appalachian/Black Rural experience—present, historical, and future. This call for submissions does not seek to define Appalachia simply in terms of geography but hopes to include a variety of writers in a variety of genres and disciplines who expand the notion and reality of what it means to be Black and Appalachian. Potential topics and approaches include but are not limited to:

• Aesthetics and form in Black literature of Appalachia
• Black artists and writers in Appalachia
• Historical perspectives of Black Appalachia
•  Black music in Appalachia
• Teaching Black literature and culture in Appalachia
• Digital and/or archival work on Black culture and literature in Appalachia
• Living in Appalachia as Black people
• Black children’s literature in Appalachia
• Black Art, photography, and other visual studies in Appalachia
• Black futures in Appalachia
• The rural landscape and Black Appalachians
• Black Appalachian foodways
• The Affrilachian Poets
• Black farmers in Appalachia

In addition, work might address one of the following: What does it mean to be Black and living in Appalachia now? In the past? What is Affrilachia? The visibility of Black people in Appalachia; Politics and the Black Appalachian experience; etc.  Submissions must be sent via our submission management system here (callaloo.expressacademic.org/login.php) Please indicate that your submission is for the Black Appalachia special issue in your cover letter.

Founding Editor

Charles Henry Rowell

Executive Editor

Kyla Kupferstein Torres

Managing Editor

Kelley A. Robbins

Program Coordinator

Hannah McMurry

Production Editor

Kathryn B. Karasek

Associate Editors

Kimberly Black
Vievee Francis
Ravi Howard
Maaza Mengiste
Gregory Pardlo
Carl Phillips
Marlon B. Ross
Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr.
Tracy K. Smith
Salamishah Tillet
Steven F. White
Dagmawi Woubshet

Assistants to the Editor

Omari Malik Amn
Óscar Berrió
Simone Brown
Julius B. Fleming, Jr.
Amber Foster
Jarvis C. McInnis
Stephanie Wasson

Contributing and Advisory Editors

GerShun Avilez
Faedra C. Carpenter
Herman Carrillo
Maryse Condé
Huey Copeland
Edwidge Danticat
Carole Boyce Davies
Toi Derricotte
Rita Dove
Brent Hayes Edwards
Thomas Sayers Ellis
Percival Everett
Susan Fraiman
Ernest J. Gaines
Thomas Glave
Kendra Hamilton
Major Jackson
Shona N. Jackson
Jamaica Kincaid
Yusef Komunyakaa
Helen Elaine Lee
Koritha Mitchell
Valerie Cassel Oliver
Caroline Rody
Natasha Trethewey
Olympia Vernon
Derek Walcott
Alvia J. Wardlaw
Melvin White, JD
John Edgar Wideman
Ivy Wilson
Judith Wilson
David Wright
Michelle Wright
Kevin Young

Send books for review to:   

Callaloo Foundation, Inc.   
2001 L Street,   
NW Suite 500  
Washington, DC 20036  

Please send book review copies to the address above. Review copies received by the Johns Hopkins University Press office will be discarded.

Abstracting & Indexing Databases

• Clarivate Analytics
  • Arts & Humanities Citation Index
  • Current Contents
  • Web of Science
• De Gruyter Saur
  • Dietrich's Index Philosophicus
  • IBZ - Internationale Bibliographie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur
  • Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur
• EBSCOhost
  • Academic Search Alumni Edition, 7/1/1993-
  • Academic Search Complete, 7/1/1993-
  • Academic Search Elite, 7/1/1993-
  • Academic Search Premier, 7/1/1993-
  • Biography Index: Past and Present (H.W. Wilson), vol.23, no.1, 2000-vol.33, no.4, 2010
  • Book Review Digest Plus (H.W. Wilson), Jan.2000-
  • Caribbean Search, 7/1/1993-
  • Current Abstracts, 1/1/2000-
  • Gender Studies Database, 1/1/1981-
  • Humanities Abstracts (H.W. Wilson), 3/1/2000-
  • Humanities Index (Online), 2000/01-
  • Humanities International Complete, 7/1/1993-
  • Humanities International Index, 7/1/1993-
  • Humanities Source, 7/1/1993-
  • Humanities Source Ultimate, 7/1/1993-
  • International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text, 1/1/1982-
  • MasterFILE Complete, 7/1/1993-
  • MasterFILE Elite, 7/1/1993-
  • MasterFILE Premier, 7/1/1993-
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
  • OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson), 3/1/2000-
  • Poetry & Short Story Reference Center, 7/1/1993-
  • Public Affairs Index, 6/1/1998-
  • RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (Repertoire International de Litterature Musicale)
  • TOC Premier (Table of Contents), 1/1/1995-
  • Women's Studies International, 1/1/1981-
• Elsevier BV
  • Scopus, 2002-
• Gale
  • Advanced Placement Fine Arts and Music, 03/1986-
  • Book Review Index Plus
  • Gale Academic OneFile, 01/1992-
  • Gale Academic OneFile Select, 03/1986-
  • Gale General OneFile, 01/1992-
  • Gale OneFile: Fine Arts, 03/1986-
  • InfoTrac Custom, 3/1986-
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
• OCLC
  • ArticleFirst, vol.18, no.1, 1995-vol.34, no.3, 2011
  • Electronic Collections Online, vol.18, no.1, 1995-vol.34, no.3, 2011
  • Humanities Index (Online), 2000/01-
  • Periodical Abstracts, v.13, n.1, 1990-v.33, n.2, 2010
• Personal Alert (E-mail)
• ProQuest
  • Art, Design & Architecture Collection, 01/01/1990-
  • Arts & Humanities Database, 01/01/1990-
  • Arts Premium Collection, 1/1/1990-
  • Black Studies Periodicals Database, 1976-
  • Ethnic NewsWatch
  • International Bibliography of Art, Selective
  • Literary Journals Index Full Text
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
  • Periodicals Index Online
  • Professional ProQuest Central, 01/01/1990-
  • ProQuest 5000, 01/01/1990-
  • ProQuest Central, 01/01/1990-
  • Research Library, 01/01/1990-
  • RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (Repertoire International de Litterature Musicale)

Abstracting & Indexing Sources

• Children's Book Review Index   (Active)  (Print)
• Chicano Index   (Ceased)  (Print)
• Current Contents Africa   (Ceased)  (Print)
• Index of American Periodical Verse   (Ceased)  (Print)
• MLA Abstracts of Articles in Scholarly Journals   (Ceased)  (Print)
• Roth's American Poetry Annual   (Ceased)  (Print)

Source: Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory.

Published five times a year in February, May, August, October, and November.

Readers include: Scholars, educators, writers, artists, poets, and general readers with an interest in African-American, Caribbean, and South American literary works, as well as academic and research library patrons. Wide bookstore distribution

Print circulation: 198

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"Callaloo has been an indispensable force in my life ever since its editor, Charles Rowell, published my first book of fiction in 1985."
–Rita Dove
Former Poet Laureate of the USA
University of Virginia

"Callaloo is without a doubt the best interdisciplinary journal devoted to African diasporic studies in existence."
–Houston Baker
University of Pennsylvania

"In 25 years Charles Rowell has made Callaloo into an intellectual and artistic achievement. Devoted primarily to post-colonial and African-American literature and the arts, it has added considerably to our knowledge of these fields. Each number of Callaloo is in its own right designed as a work of art. Callaloo deserves our congratulations and our admiration."
–Ralph Cohen
Editor, New Literary History
University of Virginia

"Without Callaloo the entire landscape of American letters would be immensely impoverished. What higher praise can a journal earn?"
–Ken Wissoker
Editor-in-Chief, Duke University Press

"In this time of need for peace, healing, and intercultural understanding, Callaloo is clearly even more important to our spirit; essential."
–Lucille Clifton
St. Mary's College

"There's no question that no matter which side we fall on, our reading and writing lives have been invaluably enriched by this wonderful journal."
–Edwidge Danticat
Author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak!

"Callaloo...is no less than a Mother Lode of outstanding Afro-American arts and letters."
–Alex Haley

"Callaloo is, without a doubt, the most elegantly edited journal of African and African-American literature being published today. Its geographical and linguistic range is as impressive as its range of coverage of so very many genres."
–Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"Callaloo has been an extermely important medium in bringing together voices from all over the African Diaspora for the past twenty-five years. Many of us saw our first bylines in its pages. Others of us have discovered in Callaloo writers and artists whom we might have never come across otherwise. There's no question that no matter which side we fall on, our reading and writing lives have been invaluably enriched by this wonderful journal."
–Edwidge Danticat

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