Call for Papers: Eudora Welty Review

Spring 2027

The Eudora Welty Review invites scholarly essays (6,500 to 10,000 words) and notes of general interest to Welty studies (1,500 to 3,500 words) for the Spring 2027 issue. We also welcome submissions of “provocations,” original, non-refereed essays (5000-6000 words max) that are argumentative in nature but do not have the development of a full-length refereed scholarly article. They take a more specific focus, propose an innovative view on a subject, and generally “provoke” new ways of seeing and engaging with Welty’s work. Open call essays, notes, and provocations should be sent to EWR co-editor Sarah Ford at sarah_ford@baylor.edu by September 1, 2026.

The 2027 EWR will also feature a special cluster dedicated to “Welty’s Futures.” Building on the 2025 International Eudora Welty Society Conference, “‘That’s for the Future to Say’: Eudora Welty in the 21st Century,” we seek essays, notes, and provocations that explore the theme of Welty’s futures: both the future in Welty's works and the future of her works at a time when, for better and for worse, emerging technologies have already changed and will continue to change the ways readers engage with literary texts and visual media alike. How do Welty’s twentieth-century writings and photographs speak to twenty-first-century readers, long after the worlds they depict have largely faded from view? How was she, and how might she still be, ahead of her time? How can scholars of today help ensure that her works remain accessible to readers of tomorrow? Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following: 

·       New approaches to Welty’s fiction, nonfiction, and photographs

·       Reconsiderations of Welty’s place within such time-honored discursive formations as modernism or the gothic

·       Readings of Welty’s life and/or work informed by new theoretical lenses or archival discoveries

·       Futurity and/or constructions of the future in Welty’s fiction

·       Future-facing aspects of Welty’s techniques as a writer and photographer for twenty-first-century audiences

·       Comedy in Welty and how her humor comes across to twenty-first-century readers

·       Authors/works that influenced or anticipated Welty

·       Welty’s afterlives—her influence on later writers or ways that later writers have paid homage to Welty or her work

·       Overlooked works in Welty’s oeuvre, or overlooked characters in her stories

·       Digital Humanities approaches to Welty

·       Welty and social media

·       New scholarly editions of Welty’s writings, correspondence, photographs, etc.

For an alternative framing of the key issues and questions for this special cluster, see the CFP for the 2025 International Welty Conference: https://eudoraweltysociety.org/?page_id=2017. 

Expressions of interest, preliminary proposals, and other inquiries should be directed to Michael Pickard at pickawm@millsaps.edu. The deadline for all submissions is September 1, 2026.