Western American Literature publishes literary criticism and interdisciplinary work with a literary focus. We invite manuscripts on any aspect of the literature, culture and place-oriented pedagogy of the North American West, including western Canada and northern Mexico. We are especially interested in work that advances the field in new and provocative directions and that engages in a conversation with the latest scholarship in the field.

If unfamiliar with our journal, take a look at recent copies available on Project Muse.

Due to space limitations, WAL will not consider essays more than 35 pages in length, inclusive of endnotes and works cited. Please do not submit an essay that is under consideration elsewhere or that has been previously published.

Essays should be submitted via our online portal, which you can find here: http://wal.edmgr.com/.

Do not put your name anywhere on the essay or in a running head, and veil any references to your own work (if applicable) to assure anonymity with the readers. You will need to register with the online portal before submitting, so we will have your personal information in the system keyed to your entry.

Typically, the peer-review process takes 3-6 months, sometimes longer. Please be patient.

NOTE: Your manuscript should follow the new, 8th edition of MLA style. Please use endnotes, not footnotes. Long discursive notes should be avoided and will count toward the page limit.

You are welcome to provide illustrations that are pertinent to your essay. Images should be scanned at 350 dpi or higher and saved as a TIF or EPS file. It is your responsibility to obtain reprint permission for images, for both print and digital formats. (We can provide sample permission forms.) The editors and the publisher reserve the right not to use poor-quality images.

Also, if you are writing about poetry, it is almost certain that you will need to obtain permission to quote from the poems. If you don’t do so ahead of time, be prepared to seek permission immediately should your article be accepted. (Again, we can provide a sample permission form.)

A word to the wise: we receive many submissions on a few authors about whom much has already been written, in particular Cormac McCarthy, Willa Cather, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Please be sure you have something truly new to say about these authors and are familiar with the latest critical studies of their work.

For more details contact the editor, Amy Hamilton.