WRITE IT IN FIRE: TRIBUTES TO MICHELLE CLIFF :Call for Submissions


Michelle Cliff (1946-2016) was a remarkable writer who claimed many identities she was taught to despise: Lesbian, Black, Woman, Jamaican. She wrote powerful novels, essays, stories, and poems that make us rethink what it means to love, to hope, and to have community. She also carved space for same-sex loving and diverse sexualities in the Caribbean by representing our desires fiercely and by being deeply rooted in place. She continues to inspire us to write our stories, our sense of self, in fire.

A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives – our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings ― all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity.
― Michelle Cliff,
“Claiming An Identity They Taught Me To Despise”

Who can say how many lives have been saved by books?”
Michelle Cliff, Everything Is Now: New and Collected Stories

It was Zoe, and Zoe alone, I thought of. She snapped into my mind, and I remembered no one else. Through the greens and blues of the riverbank. The flame of the red hibiscus in front of my grandmother’s house.”
Michelle Cliff, If I Could Write This In Fire

The Caribbean IRN invites submissions of tributes to Michelle Cliff that honor Cliff and reflect the intersections of her work, particularly Caribbean experiences and contexts of same-sex desire, women, transgender people, and the many shades of Blackness. Submissions are encouraged in any form: collages, poetry, photography, short videos, songs, short stories, social media posts, and/or visual art. Submissions will be reviewed and curated by Co-Directors of the Caribbean IRN—Rosamond S. King & Angelique V. Nixon.

Selected works will be published online as part of Love | Hope | Community: Sexualities and Social Justice in the Caribbean, a joint project of the Caribbean IRN and the journal Sargasso that reflects on the struggles/movements for sexual justice in the Caribbean. The special issue of the print journal was recently published by Sargasso: Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language, and Culture in July 2016.


The corresponding multi-media collection by the Caribbean IRN will be published online in January 2017. Email your complete submission to caribbeanirn@gmail.com with subject heading “Cliff Tribute Submission” by 15 September 2016, along with a 100-word bio.

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