Call for creative nonfiction
for a special issue of Midwestern Miscellany

Essays about the Midwest

“The core of my territory,” writes Scott Russell Sanders, “is the area within walking distance of my front door.” Wendell Berry, speaking more broadly, calls his home ground “the place that is my own place, whose earth I am shaped in and must bear”. While it may be true that “place is far more than a matter of geographical landscape,” as the editors of Imagining Home: Writing from the Midwest wrote in their introduction eleven years ago, what seeps into our souls, shapes our speech, our stories and our dreams, and lingers just beyond sensing when we are gone are nevertheless very particular places—those small squares of land or corners or towns rich in natural and human texture.

“People who know the place only by driving through [the Midwest] know the flatness,” writes Michael Martone. What do those of us who live here know? What stories can we tell that will write our places—be they large or small, wild or tame—into being? For this issue of Midwestern Miscellany, the editors seek well-crafted, original creative nonfiction essays that explore very specific places in the Midwest.

Review of essays will begin on December 1, 2006, and will continue until the issue is filled. Please send one copy of completed essay to each editor:

Laura Julier, Department of Writing, Rhetoric, & American Cultures, 235 Bessey Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1033.

Linda Elizabeth Peterson, Department of English, Anspach 227, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859.

Please query either editor at julier@msu.edu or peter1l@cmich.edu.

We will be organizing one or two sessions for the 2007 Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML) conference (May 11-13, 2007 at Michigan State University) in which submitted essays will be read. Please indicate in your cover letter whether you are interested in participating in such a panel.

Finally, please note that Midwestern Miscellany is a publication of SSML; you must be or become a member of the Society to publish in its journals and present at its conferences. To join the Society, go to the membership page on www.ssml.org.