Your reflection may: 1) focus on a specific identity and how that identity intersects with others or, 2) reflect on other aspects and intersections of human diversity, including LGBTQIA+, religion, national origin, ability, language, ability, socioeconomic class, and gender.
For all submissions, please clearly indicate which prompt you selected, as well as the quotes, passages, or images you use in your reflection.
Please send submissions to Allison Morgan, CHC Program Manager (amm203@case.edu), by 11:59pm on Sunday, February 28, 2021. The submissions selected for virtual exhibition will be decided by Wednesday, March 17, 2021, and participants will be notified via email.
2020-2021 Prompts
Prompt #1: Choose any passage from a previous Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winner from the last 10 years. Please visit https://www.anisfield-wolf.org/winners/winners-by-year/ for a list of all past winners.
Prompt #2: Choose one of the images below from Cleveland’s INTER|URBAN project, and discuss/consider its relationship to the principles of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.
Image 1: Mural by Lynnea Holland-Weiss, inspired by Jericho Brown’s The New Testament:
Image 2: Photo by Da’Shaunae Marisa Jackson, inspired by Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”:
Prompt #3: Discuss the following passage (either as a whole, or focusing on a specific section) from Zora Neale Hurston’s essay, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” and its relationship to the principles of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.
“At certain times I have no race. I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty-Second Street Library, for instance. So far as my feelings are concerned, Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Boule Mich with her gorgeous raiment, stately carriage, knees knocking together in a most aristocratic manner, has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminie with its string of beads… Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me...
But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things, priceless and worthless. A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. In your hand is the brown bag. One the ground before you is the jumble it held – so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place – who knows?”
Guidelines for Submissions
If you would be comfortable doing so, you are also invited to submit a recording of yourself reading your submission (for written work), or describing the motivation behind your submission (for non-written work).
Please submit recordings as .mp3 or .mp4 files to amm203@case.edu.
Guidelines for Written Submissions:
Essays, interviews and short stories:
Essays, interviews and short stories (including flash fiction) can be from 500 – 1,500 words, not to exceed six (6) pages in length. Please use 1-inch margins, double-spaced and 12pt font in either word (.doc or .docx) or .pdf format. If you would be comfortable doing so, you are also invited to submit a recording of yourself reading your submission; please submit recordings as .mp3 or .mp4 files.
Poetry:
All forms of poetry are welcome, including performative styles such as slam and choreopoems, as well as single and short forms such as haiku. Poetry submissions may include one to three poems, with no more than two pages per poem or 60 lines in total. For slam and choreopoems, you may submit a video or audio recording of your performance, although your text needs to be submitted as well. Video submissions may not exceed five minutes in duration and/or five pages in written length.
Although you are welcome to space your work as you see fit, please use a readable, 12pt font and submit using either word (.doc or .docx) or .pdf format. If you would be comfortable doing so, you are also invited to submit a recording of yourself reading your submission; please submit recordings as .mp3 or .mp4 files.
Guidelines for Non-Written Submissions:
Art and photography:
Artists and photographers may submit up to three pieces, which may be three individual images or part of a series. All submissions for art and photography must be digital to facilitate judging. Submissions should be in .jpg or .tiff format of a minimum 300dpi/1800px wide each, not to exceed 25MB in size. We will display the original for paintings, drawings, sculptures, and other non-digital art forms, and contribute to having prints made for photography.
Video:
Video submissions may include narrative film, interviews, montages, mashups, and music videos of original material. Videos should be no more than three to five minutes in length and must include a brief artist statement describing the project.