Africans in Ukraine: a Call for Poems, Short Stories and Creative Nonfiction


CivicLeicester is inviting and accepting poems, short stories and creative nonfiction (including memoir, diary entries, chronicles, biographical and autobiographical accounts, letters and other narratives) on the theme, Africans in Ukraine.

We welcome submissions exploring:

  • the lived experience of being an African in Ukraine

  • what brought Africans to Ukraine

  • their lives in Ukraine before the current Ukraine-Russian War

  • what happened when the war broke out

  • experiences of and flight from the conflict

  • the images, issues, histories, lives and demands that Africans in Ukraine are highlighting

  • the reception Africans got in neighbouring countries or in their countries of origin, and

  • what happens or what should happen next. 


We welcome submissions from writers of all ages, based anywhere in the world. 


We particularly welcome submissions from people of African descent who were living and studying in Ukraine and those who witnessed or are witnessing what this group of people are going through.

 

Please send the poems, short prose and creative nonfiction to civicleicester@gmail.com


The call for submissions will stay open until we have enough material for an anthology.

 

Submission Guidelines

 

● Poems should be 40 lines or less

● Short stories and creative nonfiction 1,500 words or less.

● The poems, short stories and creative nonfiction should be on the theme, Africans in Ukraine.

● Submissions must be in English. In the case of translated work, it is the translator’s responsibility to obtain permission from the copyright holder of the original work.

● If submitting a poem, short story or creative nonfiction that has been previously published, please give details of where it has appeared and confirm that you are the copyright holder.

● Ideally submissions will be typed single spaced and submitted either in the body of an email or as a .doc attachment.

● Please include a short biography of 50 words or less. This will be included in the anthology if your poem, short story or creative nonfiction is accepted. 

● You may submit a maximum of three poems or three pieces of short stories or three pieces of creative nonfiction or a combination of poems, short stories and creative nonfiction. You do not have to submit all three at the same time, but the editors can only consider a maximum of three submissions.

● We welcome submissions from writers of all ages, based anywhere in the world.

● We particularly welcome submissions from people of African descent who were living and studying in Ukraine and those who witnessed or are witnessing what this group of people are going through.

● Please send the poems, short prose and creative nonfiction to civicleicester@gmail.com

● The call for submissions will stay open until we have enough material for an anthology.

 

Notes:

  1. What Next for African Students in Ukraine? (Petition)
  2. Virginia Pietromarchi. Across Europe, African students fight to study after Ukraine exit. Al Jazeera, 13 May 2022
  3. Shamira Ibrahim. Africans In Ukraine: Stories Of War, Anti-Blackness & White Supremacy. Refinery29, 6 March 2022
  4. CivicLeicester is an indy publisher that uses poetry, video, photography and the arts to highlight conversations. Books we have published include Poetry and Settled Status for All: An Anthology (2022), Black Lives Matter: Poems for a New World (2020) and Bollocks to Brexit: an Anthology of Poems and Short Friction (2019). 

This post was updated on 12 December 2022 to remove the deadline for submissions and turn it into an open call.

This post was updated on 23 July 2022 to change the deadline from 14 July 2022 to 24 November 2022.

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