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Courtesy of Armstrong | “Burning of Black Wall Street” by Anthony Armstrong
Little Africa On Fire Invitation to Submit: Open to creative-minded individuals nationwide
Our team seeks submissions of original artwork from Visual Artists to participate in Little Africa On Fire: an anthology of essays, creative writings, and artworks inspired by the history and photographs of the evolution of Black Wall Street, the 1921 Tulsa Race War, and the ensuing erasure of the tragedy from state records and history books.
Visual Submission Guidelines
Drawings, photos, and visual art forms will be considered for selection. Artists must email editors at littleafricaonfire@gmail.com to commit to creating a piece for submission by October 31, 2019. Submissions of completed work will be due by December 15, 2019, and artists will allow 6-8 weeks for the selection process.
Artists will be compensated for two complimentary copies of the published anthology.
Photographs or detailed descriptions can be sent to littleafricaonfire@gmail.com
We are seeking submissions of poetry, personal essays, and short creative writing pieces
for consideration to be published in Little Africa On Fire, an anthology of poetry, essays, short fiction, and artworks We are seeking pieces inspired by the history and photographs of the evolution of Black Wall Street 1921, the Tulsa Race War and the ensuing erasure of the tragedy from Oklahoma records and history books.
Written Submission Guidelines
All submitted work must be original and unpublished; this includes self-publication on social media. Only submissions sent in a Microsoft word format will be accepted. Essays and short fiction writings longer than 3,500 words will not be accepted. Poems of any length will be accepted.
If submitted work is an ekphrastic poem, inspired by an image or piece of artwork, the author must include a reference and link to the work.
The submission deadline is October 31, 2019. The curators will allow 6-8 weeks for the selection process.
Submissions can be sent to littleafricaonfire@gmail.com
The authors will be compensated for two complimentary copies of the published anthology.
The selected authors and artists will have their works published in an anthology compiled of essays, personal histories, poetry, ekphrastic poetry, and visual art inspired by the images of the evolution of Black Wall Street, the 1921 Tulsa massacre, and the ensuing erasure from state record and history books.
Little Africa On Fire: an anthology and collaborative project of the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers and the Tri-City Collective edited by Quraysh Ali Lansana and Casey McLerran

Casey McLerran is an editor, a poet, designer, artist, archivist, historian, culture journalist and cultural optimizer who practices in the medium of life and is an autodidact on the topics of twentieth-century American music and literature, the influence of indigenous religions on modern religion, lifestyle marketing, Tulsa, and a wide variety of arts and crafts. McLerran’s accolades include Literary Editor of the Black Wall Street Times, 2018 first-place recipient of the R. O. M. P. Oklahoma poem contest, an ambassador at the Mused. Organization teaching emotional intelligence and self-reflection to young writes in the Tulsa area, and serial volunteer coming to your arts community.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is the author of eight books of poetry in addition to textbooks and works for children. A former faculty member of both the Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Drama Division of The Juilliard School, Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University and was an Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing. His work Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy & Social Justice in Classroom & Community (with Georgia A. Popoff) was published in March 2011 by the Teachers & Writers Collaborative and was a 2012 NAACP Image Award nominee. His most recent books include The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience & Change Agent, with Georgia A. Popoff (Haymarket Books, 2017) and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop with Kevin Coval and Nate Marshall (Haymarket Books, 2015). Lansana’s work appears in Best American Poetry 2019, and he was recently named a Tulsa Artist Fellow.