Call for literary works
Dear friends of Manoa journal,

For an upcoming issue of Manoa, I would like to gather international writing from younger authors from throughout the Pacific region, without regard to national boundaries. As you know, over the last several years, we've been focusing on specific countries. I'd like us to break out of this format, at least for now, and showcase a greater mixture of voices, all bound together.

I'm requesting that Manoa corresponding editors and friends please join in collaborating on this issue, which we will call, unglamorously for now, "The Pacific Hemisphere Under Thirty-Five: Younger Writers from Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas." For now, I'm looking for prose only: either fiction or literary nonfiction. (Perhaps we can do a volume of poetry like this later. )

The age "thirty-five" is pretty arbitrary; the impulse here is simply to see what upcoming---rather than beginner or established---writers around the region are doing. I am not seeking experimentation for its own sake, so the work need not be explicitly "post-" anything. Good writing is hard enough to find without putting too many requisites on its form or content. In this case, age, hemisphere, and quality are enough restrictions.

Please look around your region for what you think are the best stories by younger authors and send them to me by no later than the first week of March 2004---or have the authors send them directly.

Send as many as you like, and tell others if you like---but really I'm depending on each of you as individuals that I trust. The works should be previously unpublished---or, they may be previously published provided they have had only limited distribution, not worldwide, and have no unreasonable copyright restrictions on them. The works may be written originally in any language, but they need to be sent to me in translation and will be published in English. All of you who send submissions and suggestions will be credited with editing the book; Manoa's general editor and staff will make final final selections. Of course I would like to have as broad and equitable arepresentation of voices as possible, but that is not the book's goal and will not drive the final contents.

Authors, translators, and contributing editors will receive multiple copies of the book, but shouldn't expect a fee. We are too poor. The book, however, will be beautiful and the content as wonderful and surprising as we (with your help) can make it.

Thanks very much. As usual, you can send things by post to:

Manoa Journal
Department of English
University of Hawaii
1733 Donaghho Road
Honolulu HI 96822 USA

Best wishes and aloha for the new year,

Frank

Frank Stewart, Editor
Tel: 808-956-3059