The Journal of Literary Multilingualism will publish a special issue on
Multilingual Literature in Conflict Zones, co-edited by Adrian Wanner and Marianna Deganutti.
Zones of conflict are often at the center of multilingual creativity, since writers themselves are frequently in the midst of wars and migration chaos. Writing can serve as a crucial means of processing these experiences. Finding a suitable language for this endeavor might be challenging, given that many ethnic or military conflicts have a linguistic dimension: the language of the colonizer can become a target of attack during a struggle for national independence, aggressor states can question the linguistic autonomy of a neighboring country, or previously unified language zones can split into mutually hostile idioms by political fiat.
Contributions to this issue might include, but are not limited, to the following questions:• How are wars, ethnic clashes, and local or global crises depicted in translingual texts?
• How does translingual writing, in different genres, reflect war zone traumas?
• What aspects influence the language choice made by translingual authors writing about zones of conflict?
• What does it mean to write in the “language of the enemy?”
• How do authors who abandoned their native tongue as a result of political or military conflict become writers in a new language?
• Can the creative use of different scripts reflect geopolitical tensions?
• How do multilingual literary works stage political conflicts on the textual level with clashing linguistic codes?
In addition to scholarly articles, we also welcome book reviews, interviews or short pieces of creative writing related to literary multilingualism in conflict zones. Informal queries are welcome. Please direct queries to Adrian Wanner and Marianna Deganutti.
Contributors are asked to submit an abstract by April 1st, 2026.
Articles should be 6,000 to 10,000 words in length, and the deadline for their submission will be October 15, 2026.
Acceptance of the final versions of articles is subject to double-anonymous peer review.
Please send articles as email attachments to Adrian Wanner (ajw3@psu.edu) and Marianna Deganutti (mariannadeganutti5@gmail.com).