Together, Dr. Renae Watchman and Dr. ku’ualoha ho’omanawanui are co–editing an upcoming edition of Gale’s Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) that will focus on Contemporary Indigenous Writers (this is a working title once we finalize contributors).
Highlighting Indigenous writers is a magnanimous task. Because Gale has already published select biographies of authors up to 1999, and because of the recent publication of the Indigenous poetry anthology, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through edited by Joy Harjo in 2020, we made the difficult decision to highlight writers who have published fiction and short stories in the 21st century. While we recognize the impossibility of acknowledging everyone who makes up the constellation of literary talent, we have come up with a working Table of Contents for the upcoming DLB and are seeking to fill many gaps (in terms of contributors). We hope to attract contributors who teach and work in Indigenous literary arts.
If you’re interested in this project, please refer to the working TOC below and send us your
name, institutional affiliation, and author preference. You may select more than one! We will respond and confirm your choice. In the event of overlaps, we will consult before deciding. Entry length will vary, but you can expect to write anywhere from 3000–10K words. For now, we have allocated most authors at 3000 words to allow for more coverage. If, by the end of April, some writers have not been assigned, we will rethink word–length and inclusion.
Proposed Timeline:
• confirmation of contributors May 15, 2022
• July 1, 2022: your draft contribution due.
• mid–September 2022: we will return these back to you with editorial comments.
• Mid–November 2022: final revisions due.
• We are aiming to submit a complete DLB anthology by the end of December 2022 for
publication in 2023.
If you commit as a contributor, we will follow up with more specifics, including a sample
biographic entry from a previous DLB edition, as well as a contract from Gale.
mahalo, ahéhee‘, thank you for your consideration,
Renae Watchman and ku’ualoha ho’omanawanui
renae@mcmaster.ca and kuualoha@hawaii.edu