African Voices invites submissions for their Summer/Fall 2025 issue focused on the artistry and activism of the late Harry Belafonte. This issue will be guest edited by award-winning poet, author, and artist Keisha-Gaye Anderson. The submissions window closes on Apr 11, 2025 at 11:59 PM.

African Voices Magazine, founded in 1992 by Carolyn A. Butts, is dedicated to fostering cultural understanding through art, literature and film. It is one of the few print magazines in the U.S. dedicated to people of color.

This latest issue will focus on Harry Belafonte’s dedication in bringing together his creative work and activism to promote civil rights and human rights in the United States and beyond. Belafonte “helped to foment significant social change in his lifetime”, including working alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to his role and participating in the anti-apartheid movement.

For this issue, African Magazine seeks fiction, art, poetry, and essays that exemplify some of the areas that Belafonte was passionate about, including racial equity, social justice, human rights, community empowerment, the interconnectedness of the cultural production of the African diaspora in the Americas, and the power of literacy and the arts to positively transform lives.

The magazine emphasizes the importance of thinking about Civil Rights and human rights at our political moment, and invites submissions that reflect and ponder these themes.

Submission guidelines:

  • Fiction – no more than 2,500 words
  • Essays – no more than 2,500 words
  • Poetry – three to five poems
  • Artwork – three to five images
  • File types accepted: Word, PDF, JPEG, TIFF.
  • African Voices does not accept AI generated poems, short stories, essays or art. Submissions must be 100 percent created by human writers and artists. We accept original content.

Submissions are accepted via Submittable here.