Every year IRCALC Editors collate and review your entries for the relevant journals and book texts of African and Black Literature.

Important Notice for Submitting an Abstract

Deposition for Journal Articles:

Although we generally welcome any or several theoretical considerations as applied to textual analyses and elucidation of Black and African texts, the preferable critical direction is the descriptive and discursive rather than rehash and opinionation.

African Fiction, Poetry, Drama

Ensure your presentation is scholarly and text-practised as a against non-reading theoretic, your objective being the lending of insights as to hybrids, linkages, influences, divergences and such probable confluences in recent Black and African writing.

Scholar Reviews

Avoid advert euphoria on reviews of new or extant book /literature. Scholar reviews of not more than 10, 000 words will have to be both analytical and critical, geared towards useful bases for further research study. Please indicate book prices, publisher contact addresses including URL if available.

Creative Works: Short Read, Art (Images)

Limit poetry and art submissions to six poems /images (grayscale jpg) of not more than twenty lines per poem. Poems of exceptional length may be divided into parts which altogether must be no more than six parts to make for full entry. A short title and description should follow jpg image entries.

Biographical Entries

Short /Biographical Entries on writers should not exceed 3000 words and for biographical information must contain previously unpublished /additional information regarding the artiste-poet, novelist or dramatist. A jpg image of the artiste is usually required for web Author and Book Information.

Dateline /Deadlines:

While we run an open deadline system where review of submissions will be ongoing our dateline normally incepts from January till June of the issuing year.

Important Notice/ Disclaimer 

This is not a medium for old conference, seminar papers and dissertation extracts. Contributors will ensure that submitted topic subsists within the deposition of IRCALC interest.

Abstracts

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should expound a writers significance in intended discourse, the objective being to illuminate whole works (poetry, drama, prose) rather than aspects or singles. Your abstract must be approved prior to submission of your draft essay. Please send in an Abstract of your suggested writer of fiction, poetry and drama to the editors here.

Other Important Considerations

IRCALC Forum as non live presentation mandates your virtual reading to be impersonal, striving at objective distancing. We do not welcome the use of derivative and informal phrases which demean objectivity. Frequent cases of ‘I’, ‘My’, must therefore be strictly avoided. Use the collective ‘we’ or ‘our’ in their stead. Also do not clutter your introduction with repetitive statements of objective or intention. We prefer that you state directly the arguments and move into your exposition of the work.

If your abstract topic is approved, you may request to be forwarded some PDF extracts of previously published materials relevant to your topic for your use in updating and your manuscript. Your initial submission is therefore of necessity a draft.

Limit your draft to a maximum of 15 pages of Letter (8.5″x11) page size. Use footnotes rather than endnotes. To comply with universal eBook formatting we disallow automatic numbering, bullets and other auto formatting characters and types. If your work exceeds the word count it will be spilt or, at worse, rejected.  Please note that the editors may not extend you any further courtesy of explanation regarding their rejection of your submission.

Although your essay title might seem to reflect the topic of discussion the editors and publishers reserve the right to make changes consonant with journal history and editorial ethic in any final or subsequent Critical Issues.

Citation

Please review your Works Cited to ensure compliance with 2010 MLA before submission. The MLA subsequent should be your recommended citation format until otherwise announced.

Translations

If submitting in language other than English, a translation of the range of French or African languages to English will be required. You may request for, or forward the editors, archival PDFs and other eContent releases of critical and other creative publications. You may also send electronic copies of review materials, books and relevant journal publications to IRCALC editors for peer corroboration purposes.

Contact us to receive the Publishing Conditions in your system or mailbox.

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2020 African Library of Critical Writing (Ongoing)

The Editors are reviewing significant authors and writings of African and diasporic experience for current issue. We are poised to elicit from the narrative content talent and perspective around an essentially African experience.

In the last 12th of our journal entry we had featured critical entries on authors of African fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction categories. We explored the African fictional landscape of human relationships and associations in addition to the tropes prevalent in the understanding and recreation of history and the shaping of thought brought about by fictional and cultural creations that are continually evolving and being reassessed within the canons

Now with the emergence of wider perspectives we aim to move beyond textual and conventional categorisations to investigate progress and aesthetic along fairly original and indigenous African philosophy.

To this end more critical entries and reviews on authors of African fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction are being reviewed for the Library series.

We will welcome new insights and fresh light on Narrative, History, Language, Nature and Environment by scholars who can envision the writer in the imaginative articulation of African identity, the contestation of history, reassessment of culture and tradition and employment of the story for communal uplifts and social transformation.

Evaluative comparisons of more than one or two authors and their oeuvre emerging from their historic enterprise will meet our standards for diligent assessment of Africas creative literature alongside the vision, progress and aesthetic of her various nationalities, not neglecting the expanding awareness and consciousness of Space-Time in human evolution.

Other prevailing discussions and assessments of global peace initiatives and international friendships that create room for complementary values as the right approach to cultural understanding and appreciation in contemporary society will be gladly appraised.

Researchers and scholars of Black and African writing are welcome to submit proposals and to dialogue with the editors regarding possible, suggested improvements on their research effort. Contributors must be willing and prepared to work with the editors.

How To Submit 

Original abstracts of no more than 600 words showing topic, intended arguments and their relevance to our discourse should be submitted by simple Open Document Text or Wordpad  attachment for approval.

Contact us to receive 2 Free PDF Classic Essays on African Writing: 

1. “Mutant Traditions”

2.”Re-visioning African Writing”

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CFP Archives

Sponsored:

2015 AFRICAN SHORT STORIES Vol. 2

OBJECTIVE

The short story is an important but largely neglected medium for artistic and educational development of many cultures. Most creative writers and novelists had started out with short story writing although few have been consistent and successful in handling the compressed narrative structure of the story telling tradition. In many African cultures it has been an elegant, celebrated means of cultural transmission and moral upbringing of the young. The Society of Literary Fellows – Literary Society [Online] int.- in conjunction with the International Research Council on African Literature and Culture, IRCALC, is poised to revive reading and critical interest in African short fictions and their worldwide transmission through available information and distribution media.

SUBMISSION NOTES

Submissions are open to published or not-yet-published writers from Africa.

A writer may submit one or more entries; however, entries with tardy typographical finishing may not be accepted for review.

Submissions in Swahili, Xhosa, Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba (and other African language of world broadcast) will be considered if their equivalent English translations are attached.

The Literary Society will adopt a review process and will consider quality of language and style of composition.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

A submission could be less, but not more than, 10,000 words of an original composition.

We will welcome any work of elegant imagination although life writing are generally considered if presented in short story mode.

Please note that work based on pedestrian or beaten concerns will not be fitting for this volume.

A work that relies upon or recreates familiar oral traditions and legends must have at least 75% innovation and variation in composition.

Stories may reflect aspects of modern or traditional life but credible fictional characterisation (human and animal) and visionary perspectives on conflict within the tradition of the short fiction narrative will merit especial recognition.

Literary experimentations across the genres (poetic and dramatic) and the marriage of traditional story telling with modern narrative techniques might prove useful.

SUBMISSION PROCESS

Submissions are ongoing for the year 2015 until June 30. Initial Entries for review may be sent to the editors’ email. Literary Society int. may issue acceptance notification to successful entrants subject to final and satisfactory review of submitted stories. By your submission you agree to the Publishing Conditions of the International Research Council of African Literature and Culture, IRCALC

2013 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE #10

With the end of the Mayan calendar of millennial history by 2012, and the prospect, through literature, of advancing those dreams which humanity had so often expressed through their enlightened spokesmen and women, we are learning to recognize the common ideals which unfold as we grow. JAL 10 goes beyond the textual categorisations within conventional literary traditions to investigate progress and aesthetic in African and African-American writings, illuminating significant psychological, spiritual and ethical values that dominate much of ancient and modern African and African-American works of the centuries.

CONTEMPORARY BLACK LITERATURE “Series II” 2012

Contemporary Black Literature “Series II is also committed to deeper investigations of black identities in modern black texts, and the commemoration of ancestral heritage for its capacity to redeem the dead and forgotten past. The Contemporary Series II of the Journal of African Literature #9 will further pursue the permutation of Black literary traditions within the continent and beyond, providing the comparative bridge for the eternal communion of black literary and mythological heritage which inhere in resuscitating the past as a means of restoring lost values.

CONTEMPORARY BLACK LITERATURE “CBL” -TEXTBOOK EDITION

The 2011 Textbook edition of the African Journal #8 will pursue the examination of enduring canonical literatures and several emerging works of Black literary traditions through their historical and literary developments within the continent and beyond.

2010 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN LITERATURE: “Across Borders”

This edition of 2010 JAL is a further quest through an all-expansive African heritage in and beyond regional or national groupings. It is built upon the framework of Black cultural nationalism as a consistent element of African-centred modernity.

JOURNAL OF NEW POETRY: “Lyrical Traditions”

The 2010 concentration on Lyrical Traditions in Poetry is a continuation of past aspects of the study of poetry and music but one in which all the elements of lyrical composition are channelled in a didactic and aesthetic movement to artistic competence.

NEW BLACK AND AFRICAN WRITING Vol.2 : Critical Supplement

Continuing the perspectives on writings from Africa and African Diaspora.

CFP 2009: NEW BLACK AND AFRICAN WRITING.

A Critical Supplement on New Writers from Africa and African Diaspora, its Contemporary perspectives on writings from Africa and African Diaspora are therefore tributaries of the frontier spirit of Black Renaissance informing past, present and continuing perspectives on black and African traditions in literature.

CFP 2009: JOURNAL OF AFRICAN LITERATURE: “Oral Traditions”

Our 2009 commitment to the study in oral traditions is borne from the awareness that African verbal arts still survive in works of discerning writers, and in the conscious exploration of its tropes, perspectives, philosophy and consciousness, its complementary realism, and ontology, for the delineation of authentic African response to memory, history and all possible confrontations with modern existence such as witnessed in recent analysis of the African novel.

CFP 2009: JOURNAL OF NEW POETRY: “Poetry and Music”

This years focus on Music and Poetry is in recognition of the significance of both genres in contemporary African aesthetics.

CFP: Journal of African Literature 2008

Editors of the International Research Council on African Literature and Culture (IRCALC) are currently receiving submissions in existing literatures of Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone Africa involving issues in contemporary postcolonial modernities and citizenship (re)definitions. This time we have chosen to look specifically at literature of Conflict, of War and Post war dilemmas; literatures that address the discords and divisions within Africa.

CFP: 2008 Journal Supplement: The Works of Ossie Enekwe

The editors at IRCALC invite research papers, critical presentations and editorial collaborations for our 2008 Critical Supplement project on the works of retiring professor of dramatic literature at the University of Nigeria, Onuora Oswald Enekwe, a.k.a. Ossie Melody.

CFP: Journal of African Literature and Culture ~ New Poetry 2007

Calling for submissions for the next volume of essays on African Literatures. A WIDENING FRONTIER is the theme of the 2007 edition of the Journal of African Literature and Culture (JALC), the internationally-reviewed publication of Africa Research.

CFP: 2007 Critical Supplement: The Works of Chin Ce

Papers centring on the works of Nigerian poet and novelist Chin Ce are invited to supplement ongoing 2007 journal issue.

CFP 2006: Journal of New Poetry V3 2006

Papers are invited for the 2006 edition of the journal of new poetry of African expressions NP V3 2006.

The journal of new poetry (internationally refereed) is the project of the International Research Council on African Literature and Culture [IRCALC] which has previously edited the New Nigerian Poetry journal. …

JALC – ALJ 2006 CALL FOR PAPERS

IRCALC editors have announced the call for papers on the theme ‘Re-Imagining African Literature (2)’ This second edition of the original 2003 theme edited by Charles Smith is expected to complete the previous scholarly essays that appeared in Volume 1 in 2003.

NNP 2005 JOURNAL EDITORS INVITE PAPERS

Writers and scholars all over the world are invited to submit papers for the third edition of NP journal of the International Research Council on African Literature and Culture IRCALC. The previous journal issue of first quarter of 2005 is dedicated to retiring professor of English, poet and critic, Professor Romanus N Egudu of the University of Benin. Unlike the ALJ that deals on African and Diaspora literature and cultural issues, the New Nigerian Poetry NNP journal aims to bridge the gap in appreciation of oral and written poetry of Africa with Nigeria as its focus.