Last spring, the project launched a series of events honoring Wilsonwith a keynote address by Henry Louis Gates Jr., who reissued Wilson's Our Nig in 1983. The project subsequently hosted three separate panel discussions across New Hampshire, Wilson's home state, investigating the significance her the work from various disciplinary perspectives.

The Harriet Wilson Project is looking for essays to augment the work of the historians,literary critics, social scientists, and others who participated in the spring panel discussions. Since the novel’s rediscovery, scholars have engaged in a lively and ongoing conversation about its historical significance with respect to issues of class and poverty in the north and slavery in the south; its generic innovations as a bridge between the slave narrative and the ascendant genre of domestic fiction; and its relative place in the unstable canons of African American and American literature, to name only a few of the strains of this continuing exchange. This collection of essays draws together this rich reservoir of academic insight with an upswelling of community interest in claiming Wilson as a Northern New England writer and forbear. It bridges the academy and the common reader to further our ongoing understanding of this seemingly modest work, the compelling and still mysterious woman who wrote it, and the cultural complexity of the region from which she hailed.

The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2005. Send inquiries and submissions to jaboggis@earthlink.net, raimon@usm.maine.edu, and barbw1025@yahoo.com.