Special Issue | Writing Across Languages: Anglophone Short Stories by Multilingual Authors
Guest edited by Elsa Court (University of Oxford), Nina Ellis (The American University in Cairo), and Sonya Moor (Manchester Metropolitan University).
In ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ Ernest Hemingway uses a Spanish expression to insinuate the linguistic reality of a geographic location that is experienced only in passing. ‘Dos cervezas,’ says one of his two central characters, a man introduced as ‘the American,’ whom we understand is in a precarious relationship with a younger woman, also a native English speaker. For the duration of the five-page story, the couple sit at a table in the shade of a café while waiting for a train to Madrid, discussing the future of their relationship in coded terms. They continue ordering drinks presumably still in Spanish — but after the mention of ‘Dos cervezas’, this second language is presumed, rather than transcribed. The rest of the story — including further exchanges with the bar owner — is written entirely in English.
The literary fiction landscape has dramatically changed since the time when, as Hilary Mantel put it, a young writer was systematically advised to avoid using foreign language expressions in her prose, for fear of sounding ‘elitist’ to the Anglo-American reader. Moreover, the globalisation of Anglophone creative expression means that not all fiction written in English today is produced from imaginations that think only — or even primarily — in English, even when that is the primary language of their texts.
International, peer-reviewed Short Fiction in Theory and Practice (Intellect Books) is proud to invite original short-story submissions for a practice-based special issue to be published in September 2027, entitled ‘Writing Across Languages: Anglophone Short Stories by Multilingual Authors’. The issue will bring together inventive works of contemporary short fiction, written primarily in English, but also incorporating interplay with one or more other languages.
The editors invite submissions of up to 5,000 words that make use of at least one language other than English or find ways of gesturing towards other languages within their narratives. There is no minimum word count.
Deadline for submissions: 1st December 2026.
Please visit the Short Fiction in Theory and Practice website for submission guidelines at: Intellect Books | Short Fiction in Theory & Practice
For informal enquiries please contact Principal Editor Ailsa Cox (coxa@edgehill.ac.uk).