Organizing Committee Symposium on Eritrean Literature & Book Exhibition Presents:

Symposium on Eritrean Literature

March 9-10, 2018

Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California

This symposium will be a forum for initial conversations to create support and information networks between authors, publishers, and readers. It will host presentations and discussions by established publishers and leading scholars in the field, who will offer important guidelines on how to prepare manuscripts and work with publishers.

  • Papers can be written in national or international languages.
  • Each presenter will have 20 minutes presentation time, followed by 10 minutes allocated for Q & A.
  • Presentations can be research papers; reflective essays; creative works (poetry, short story, oral tradition, performative arts).
  • The symposium organizers value diversity of contributions in all languages. Because selected papers from the symposium will be considered for publication in the different languages (and in separate volumes—provided there are sufficient papers to warrant one), please use Ge'ez program for Tigre and Tigrinya; Standard program and font for Arabic; and New Times Roman for English.

Themes of the Symposium include:

  • Writing in Eritrean languages in a Pan-Africanist context
  • Indigenous languages and Indigenous knowledge systems; why should we care about African languages?
  • Literature and national/African identities
  • Gender, and Eritrean Women Writing
  • Children's Literature; Young Adult Literature
  • Freedom, dissent, resistance, justice in literature
  • Exile and literature
  • Current Publication Practices, and Challenges of Publishing
  • Possibilities and Future Directions

Please submit an abstract for papers by clicking on the submission button below or by e-mail attachment to .

Deadline January 30, 2018.