The Ethiopian Eritrean poet Mahtem Shiferraw is guest-editing World Literature Today’s upcoming “New African Voices” portfolio, to be published in the spring of 2022.
Although the publication will consider writers in any genre, it is primarily looking for prose writers: fiction, narrative non-fiction, flash-fiction.
Send up to 3,000 words of original, unpublished work, via Submittable, by November 15, 2021. Submissions can be short pieces, or excerpts from larger works (the latter need to be self-contained).
Writers should expect to hear back by December 2021; writers selected for publication will be paid.
About the Guest Editor
Mahtem Shiferraw is a writer and visual artist from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, Poets.org, The 2River View, Luna Luna Magazine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and Numero Cinq. In 2016, she won the Sillerman Prize for African Poets and her full-length collection, Fuchsia, was published by the University of Nebraska Press. Her poetry chapbook, Behind Walls & Glass, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her most recent collection, Your Body Is War, is out now from the University of Nebraska Press. She has served as editor for Atlas and Alice, The Bleeding Lion, and The Hunger Mountain.
She is the founder of Anaphora Arts, a nonprofit organization working to advance the works of writers and artists of color. She has served as a jury member for the Neudstat International Prize for Literature, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and the Lucy Munro Brooker Prize. In 2018, she received the Imani Award for Artistic Excellence from Harvard University. As of 2020, she serves on the Editorial Board of World Literature Today. She holds an MFA from Vermont College. Her next poetry collection, Nomenclatures of Invisibility, is forthcoming from BOA Editions, Ltd. (2023).
Submit to World Literature Today‘s “New African Voices” portfolio via Submittable.