Editors are seeking contributions to an edited collection titled, Writing with the Gods. This collection of original essays focuses on literary representations of African-influenced religions and spiritual traditions in African-American and Caribbean Literature, such as Voodoo, Hoodoo, Conjure, Obeah, Vodou, Santeria, Myal, and Candomble.  

The volume is being conceived in two major sections. The first section focuses on African -American literature and the second on Caribbean literature. This collection will feature introductory essays by the editors, exploring each religious practice, followed by commissioned original essays addressing African-based belief systems and examining the various ways that these belief systems, with origins in western Africa, are constructed in literature by African American and Caribbean writers.

Although there has been significant work done on these traditions as rendered by American authors such as Zora Neale Hurston and Ishmael Reed and Caribbean authors, such as Eintou Pearl Springer and Erna Brodber, there is still much critical work to be done in this genre, both in American and Caribbean literature. Indeed, a perusal of African American literature over the last four-hundred years and Caribbean literature of the past 120 years reveals African supernaturalism as a major theme that runs throughout. From the earliest slave narratives, through Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Era, the Black Arts Movement, and beyond into Afro-Futurism, African-based religious and spiritual beliefs and practices are a reoccurring major motif that informs authorial voices and helps cultivate African American culture through these works.

Writing with the Gods will offer readers a new examination and vision of African-based spiritual traditions in the literature of the Black Atlantic, both as a source of mystery, misunderstanding, and fear, as well as a belief system that survived and evolved through slavery and beyond and continues to serve as a source of African American and Caribbean identity.

Some possible African American novelists/writers include, but are not limited to:

• Charles Johnson
• Gloria Naylor
• Rainelle Burton
• Toni Cade Bambara
• John Edgar Wideman
• Octavia Butler
• Don Belton
• Toni Morrison
• Darius James
• Arthur Flowers

Some possible Caribbean novelists/writers include, but are not limited to:

• Erna Brodber
• CLR James
• Una Marson
• Erna Brodber
• Maryse Conde
• Ismith Khan
• Paule Marshall
• Eintou Pearl Springer
• Roger Mais

 This collection is under review at a US-based university press. Proposals due by May 31, 2025. Notification of acceptance by June 15, 2025. Full articles of 5000 words (first draft) due by September 15, 2025.