Call for Papers
CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE FROM CANADA / TURTLE ISLAND: NEW PERSPECTIVES AND EMERGING CONVERSATIONS
Call for Papers for a special issue of
Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies
https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/2254-1179/index
Volume 16 (2027)
Guest Editors: Susie O’Brien, Samuel Ikueze and Zahra Tootonsab
(Deadline: December 15, 2025)
Over the past century, Canadian children’s literature has transformed from an extension of British imperial ideology into a complex and contested site of cultural production. Rooted in settler-colonial narratives and shaped by the influences of British and American markets, early children’s books promoted nationalist, moralistic, and often exclusionary ideals. However, the rise of Canadian cultural nationalism in the 1970s, alongside institutional support and academic recognition, fostered a distinct national literature. Since then, the field has diversified, with Indigenous, racialized, and queer authors challenging dominant narratives and reimagining belonging, identity, and childhood itself. Today, Canadian children’s and YA literature presents a rich terrain for examining how stories for young readers negotiate the tensions between ideology and imagination, market forces and cultural sovereignty, colonial legacies and transformative futures.
This special issue of Canada and Beyond aims to expand the scholarly conversation on youth literature and its global relevance. We invite original, critical contributions that explore Canadian children’s and YA literature in all its forms and from any critical or theoretical perspective, including but not limited to: ecocriticism, Indigenous literatures and methodologies, gender and queer theory, critical race studies, diaspora and migration, memory studies, disability studies, postcolonialism, speculative fiction, graphic narratives, and pedagogy. We are particularly interested in contributions that highlight underrepresented voices, examine how literature for young readers engages with aesthetic, cultural, political, and historical concerns, and how it participates in shaping young readers’ sense of the world, as well as the past, present, and future of Canadian cultural life through their formal choices, thematic concerns, and institutional contexts.
Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the exploration of the following topics in Canadian children’s or YA fiction:
- Representations of childhood and adolescence as political or contested categories
- Indigenous storytelling, resurgence, and child-centered futures
- Historical fiction and nation-building narratives
- Memory, trauma, and intergenerational storytelling
- Migration, displacement, and belonging
- Transnational and diasporic voices
- Representations of multiculturalism, race, and belonging
- Place and environmental justice
- Ecological awareness and climate crisis
- Gender fluidity, queerness, and identity formation
- National mythologies and their deconstruction
- Graphic narratives, picture books, and multimodal storytelling
- Horror, dystopia, and speculative futures in youth narratives
- Translation and bilingualism in Canadian children’s books
- Popular culture, media adaptations, and fandom
- Pedagogical approaches to teaching children’s literature
We encourage submissions that take an interdisciplinary approach and welcome both established and emerging scholars, including graduate students. All submissions to Canada & Beyond must be original, unpublished work.
Articles, between 6,000 and 8,000 words in length (including abstract, notes, key words, and works cited), should follow MLA 9th edition style, include an abstract of 150–200 words and a brief author bio. Submissions should be uploaded to Canada & Beyond’s online submissions system (https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/2254-1179/about/submissions ) and simultaneously sent to c.b@usal.es and anafra@usal.es by December 15, 2025. For more information, please contact the guest editors at the e-mail addresses above. Your submission will be peer-reviewed for volume 16, 2027.
Canada & Beyond is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by Salamanca University Press / Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, and welcomes original manuscripts all year round. You can learn more about the journal’s review process, style guide and past issues here: https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/2254-1179
This CFP is part of the work conducted within the joint international research projects The Premise of Happiness (PID2020-113190GB-C21) and Narrating Resilience (PID2020-113190GB-C22), as well as TransCanadian Networks.
Previous Call for Papers
OVERBURDEN: READING/IMAGINING EXTRA-CANADIAN ECOLOGIES (15, 2026)
WRITING THE ‘GOOD LIFE’ IN NARRATIVES OF CANADA (13, 2024)
EVERYTHING IS AWFUL? ECOLOGY AND AFFECT IN LITERATURES IN CANADA (12, 2023)
RECOGNITION AND RECOVERY OF CARIBBEAN CANADIAN CULTURAL PRODUCTION (10, 2021)