Call for Papers: Special Issue of the Journal of West Indian Literature on the work of Pamela Mordecai
This special issue of the Journal of West Indian Literature seeks papers and reflections on the work of Pamela Mordecai. For over four decades now, Mordecai has been producing diverse literary works. She has published poetry, short stories, plays, textbooks, and other forms of writing, including a novel and a short-story collection. In addition to being one of the women writers who led the steady growth of Caribbean women’s literature since the 1980s, Mordecai has been at the forefront of the work of bringing visibility to Caribbean women’s literature via ground-breaking collections such as Her True-True Name. Yet, Mordecai’s oeuvre and other contributions to Caribbean literature and culture as editor, anthologist and publisher have not been sufficiently acknowledged by the critical community.
We invite scholarly articles that address different aspects of Mordecai’s work, including her located Caribbean sensibilities and rhetorical strategies, as well as her diasporic reach. We also welcome non-traditional academic submissions (such as creative reflections on her work and influences) and book reviews of her latest collection, A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems (2022). Scholarly essays should be between 6000 and 8000 words. Creative pieces can be between 2000 and 5000 words, and book reviews 1000-1500 words.
Prospective contributors should submit 300-500 word abstracts by 31 August 2022. Responses to abstract submissions will be sent by 10 September 2022 and final versions of accepted papers will be due 15 October 2022. Please send abstracts and all inquiries to Carol Bailey (c2010bailey@gmail.com) and Stephanie McKenzie (smckenzi@grenfell.mun.ca)
About the special issue editors: Carol Bailey is co-editor of A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems, author of A Poetics of Performance: The Oral-Scribal Aesthetic in Anglophone Caribbean Fiction (UWI Press, 2014), and the forthcoming book, Writing the Black Diasporic City in the Age of Globalization (Rutgers University Press, 2023). Stephanie McKenzie is Professor, Grenfell Campus, Memorial University, and co-editor of A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems. She is the author of three books of poetry (published by Salmon Press) and Before the Country: Native Renaissance, Canadian Mythology (University of Toronto Press, 2007; rpt. 2019).
