Submissions Open for Open-Call and Special Issue 2026!
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Dear Graduate Students,
The YU-WRITE: Journal of Graduate Student Research in Education is calling for papers and inspiring book/film/art reviews for our 2025-2026 open-call issue. Our deadline for submissions is Friday, January 2, 2026, at 11:59 pm EST (Toronto time).
Publishing Schedule:
Call for Papers: Friday, October 17, 2025
Manuscripts Due to Journal: Friday, January 9, 2026
Review #1 Response: Friday, January 23, 2026 - revisions due within 2 weeks
Review #2 Response: Friday, February 20, 2026 - revisions due within 2 weeks
Review #3 Response (if applicable): Friday, March 20, 2026 - revisions due within 1 week
Copyediting Process: from Friday, April 3, 2026 - Friday, May 15, 2026
Final Manuscript Preparations: Tuesday, May 29, 2026
Publication Date: Monday, June 1, 2026
Special Issue Alert!
Call for Papers: Special Issue on Black Mothers Writing in Canada and Beyond
Black literary theorists chart a history of Black writing in Canada that dates to 1785 (Davis, 2007; Clarke, 1997). This longstanding and expansive body of work comprises a range of textual pieces, such as journal entries about happenings at trading posts, anti-slavery editorials, and narratives on contemporary migration journeys (Vernon, 2020). Black writing in Canada is connected to and transformed by its relation to the Black world, including “the transatlantic slave trade, and resulting cultures and networks of the Black Atlantic” (Vernon, 2020, p. 18). For more than 200 years, the tradition of Black writing in Canada has engaged complex expressions of Blackness, unsettling narratives of nation, identity, and belonging (Davis, 2007). Truly, Black writing in Canada calls on us to think through what it means to be Black across time and space.
Black mothers have long contributed to this literary tradition of Black writing. Writing is a radical act of self-creation for Black mothers living in Canada, a country consumed in the afterlives of slavery. Black mothers write in the face of domination to reassert a Black maternal presence on this land. Through writing, Black mothers interrogate their everyday work, pain, dreams, and concerns. Ultimately, writing is a space where Black mothers express “the weft and weaves of ordinary life” (Campt, 2021, p. 41) and imagine futures yet unfolded.
Public and academic discourses on Black experiences with literacy often overlook Black mothers’ ongoing leadership in and relationship with writing. A paucity of educational research investigates how Black mothers in Canada and beyond write to affirm themselves as educational leaders, pass on knowledge to their children, and form kinship networks. Instead, educational scholarship on Black writing largely focuses on Black students’ underachievement in and disconnection to writing.
The special issue Black Mothers Writing in Canada and Beyond invites those from the academic community, most notably graduate students, and members of the wider public to amplify Black mothers’ experiences of and relationships with writing in varied educational settings. We welcome submissions that amplify Black mothers’ narratives of writing in Canada and across the world.
References
Campt, T. (2021). A black gaze: Artists changing how we see. The MIT Press.
Clarke, G. E. (1997). Eyeing the north star: Directions in African-Canadian literature. McClelland and Stewart.
Davis, A. (2007). Black Canadian literature as diaspora transgression: The second life of Samuel Tyne. Topia, 17(17), 31–49. https://doi.org/10.3138/topia.17.31
Vernon, K. (Ed.). (2020). The Black Prairie archives: An anthology. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/york/detail.action?docID=6190789
Clarification of terms & topics for the special issue:
For this issue, we situate Black mothers within Black traditions of kinship networks. As such, we understand Black mothers to include community mothers, othermothers, aunties, and grandmothers (amongst others) who work and care for children who may or may not be biologically or legally theirs.
Topics of key interest include, but are not limited to:
- Black mothers writing for healing, self-recovery, and dreaming.
- Black mothers writing as spiritual practice.
- Black mothers writing for community organizing, resistance, and education.
- Black mothers writing to transmit cultural memory and knowledge across generations.
- Black mothers writing to assert their educational leadership and challenge violent educational practices.
- Multilingual Black mothers’ use of writing to negotiate language, identity, and belonging within educational settings.
Key submission information
We invite submissions from the academic community, especially current graduate students, and members of the wider public. We also encourage submissions from adult learners, post-secondary students, independent scholars, educators, and others.
We welcome 1) traditional academic, scholarly contributions and 2) creative pieces, such as poetry, photography (and other visual arts), audio essays, and so forth. We recognize that these are not mutually exclusive categories. All pieces in this Special Issue will undergo peer review in line with the journal's standard student-led peer review practices.
Guest editor information:
Dr. Stephanie Fearon joins York University’s Faculty of Education as the inaugural assistant professor of Black thriving and education. Her research draws on Black storytelling traditions to explore the ways that Black mothers and educational institutions partner to support Black student well-being. Fearon uses literary and visual arts to communicate – in a structured, creative and accessible form – insights gleaned from stories shared by Black mothers and their families. Fearon has worked in public education systems for nearly 15 years, assuming teaching and leadership positions in France, Guadeloupe and Canada.
For more information or if you would like to discuss ideas, please contact the guest editor: Dr. Stephanie Fearon (sfearon1@edu.yorku.ca).
Guidelines for more traditional academic works
Academic pieces can range from 3,000 to 4,000 words, double spaced, and formatted in APA 7th edition style. Only unpublished pieces that are not under review by other publications are eligible for consideration.
Guidelines for more creative works
We are interested in creative personal reflections, diary entries, short films, brief podcasts, photo essays, and small-scale artistic products. Creative submission must also be accompanied by an artwork statement of 500-1000 words (not including references) plus adhere to the general submission requirements.
Images
Minimum width of 537px
A minimum resolution of 72dpi
Upload each image separately as a .jpg file
The location, the number and title of image should be referenced in the text.
Videos
Upload videos to YouTube. Make public.
Insert video title and URL link into text. Do not embed videos directly into text.
To ensure accessibility, any videos must include closed captioning at the time of publication. Closed captioning is the responsibility of the author. Instructions for how to close caption YouTube videos can be found here. While you can use the auto-caption function, it is your responsibility to do a final edit of the caption file, as described in the provided link, to ensure accuracy.
Audio
Upload audio files to SoundCloud and then share the URL.
The journal accepts papers from graduate students in any institution nationally and internationally working within the field of education. This may include:
- Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research with a leaning toward education
- Early Childhood Education to Post-Secondary Education
- Education beyond formal contexts (including but not limited to diverse and emerging forms of teaching and learning, spaces, and places)
- Futurist aspirations: what kind of futures do we want to have? Rebuilding, speculative futures
- Theoretical orientations/positionings (critical pedagogies, literacy, educational philosophies)
- Ways of Knowing
- Graduate research studies and reports in exploratory, theoretical, and/or practice-based research
- Research-creation and arts-based research
YU-WRITE is a student-run, non-profit, open-access journal aiming to spotlight graduate students' research in education. It was founded in 2022 at York University's Faculty of Education, aiming to support the writing development of graduate students at York University and beyond.
We look forward to reading your innovative works!
Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact Victoria Villani at journal.yuwrite@gmail.com
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YU-WRITE is also looking for peer reviewers, copyeditors, finance coordinators and general members.
If you are interested in joining the journal, please contact Victoria at journal.yuwrite@gmail.com
Victoria Villani
Journal Managing Editor
YU-WRITE: Journal of Graduate Student Research in Education
email: journal.yuwrite@gmail.com
website: https://yuwrite.journals.yorku.ca/
