Callaloo

Call for Submissions 

Black Panama: A People in Transit 

Guest Editor: Darrel Alejandro Holnes 

Contributing Editor: Shyanne Figueroa Bennett 

Deadline: July 15th, 2026 at 11:59PM EST. 

 Callaloo calls for submissions to contribute to a forthcoming special section called Black Panama: A People in Transit. The special section will showcase poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and scholarly work that:

• Centers Black Panamanian American voices and experiences
• Explores the complexities of diaspora, migration, and transnational identity
• Examines the ongoing impacts of U.S. imperialism and extractive capitalism
• Contributes to conversations about global Blackness and Latinidad
• Highlights the literary innovations emerging from communities in transit

We invite self-identifying Black Panamanian writers based in the United States, Panama, or elsewhere to submit their short fiction, essays, and poems, and writers of any background to review a literary novel, short story, essay or poetry collection written by a Black Panamanian writer.

Historical Context and Contemporary Relevance

The legacy of Afro-Caribbean migration during the U.S.-led Canal project fundamentally transformed Panama's cultural landscape. As Juan González documents in Harvest of Empire, subsequent mass migrations of Black Panamanians to the United States resulted directly from U.S. interventions, including 95 years of occupation.

Today, as Panamanian sovereignty over the Canal faces renewed uncertainty, North American businesses continue to claim and extract resources from Panamanian lands. In the United States, Black and Latinx immigrants navigate heightened precarity. Black-Panamanian American writers reside at the intersection of these tensions, embodying a state of perpetual transience that uniquely positions them to excavate themes of global Blackness—a manifold identity that is simultaneously rooted in and transcends Caribbean, Latin American, and North American contexts.

Callaloo seeks new, original and unpublished work from writers who embody what Carlos Melo Wynter describes as Panama's "culture in transit." In his book Panama: El Dique, El Agua, y Los Papeles, Melo Wynter writes, "Panama has been marked—indelibly or not—as the bridge of the world," a designation that has shaped the nation's constant state of flux and migration.

Submission Requirements and Guidelines 

• Please adhere to Callaloo’s general Submission Requirements and Style Guidelines particularly with regard to word count and number of submissions. All prose submissions must be submitted in English. We will review submissions that have been translated from Spanish into English with proper citation provided for the translation. 
• Poetry submissions may be submitted in both English and Spanish. We will consider accepted submissions for publication in both languages.  Any work translated by someone other than the author must include proper citation for the translation. Callaloo will not provide translation services. 

Inquiries related to this call for submissions should be directed to info@callalooliteraryjournal.com, using the subject line: Black Panama Special Section 

Submission Guidelines 

All manuscripts must be double spaced (except poetry) and submitted only as a Word document (.doc or .docx). We suggest that prose manuscripts not exceed 6,000 words (excluding the abstract and references in the case of scholarly articles), although we will consider submissions of up to 10,000 words if the piece truly merits the length. All manuscripts should follow the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (3rd edition) and include a works cited and endnotes, not footnotes. 

Callaloo's Style Guidelines can be downloaded here.