The William Carlos Williams Review invites submissions for a special issue dedicated to exploring Williams’s Latin American and Caribbean heritage, emphasizing his engagement with Puerto Rican, Caribbean, Peninsular, and Colonial Spanish literary traditions, alongside broader themes of borders and translation—linguistic, geographic, and cultural—that shape his work. The issue seeks essays that examine how these influences inform Williams’s poetry, prose, and artistic practices, as well as his contributions to the medical humanities, health, and culture. Submissions may include critical analyses, historical contextualizations, and interdisciplinary approaches that illuminate Williams’s complex relationship with Puerto Rico and its relevance to contemporary discussions of translation, identity, and cross-cultural dialogue.
In collaboration with the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes, the guest editors for the special issue are Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, Aurora Levins Morales, and Maritza Stanchich. The editors welcome academic articles, informal commentaries and reflections, in English or Spanish, up to 5,000 words. Send questions and submissions to nuevos.horizontes.uprm@gmail.com.
We welcome abstracts for 1 December 2025 (feedback will be provided by 31 December) and the deadline for submissions is 30 March 2026. All submissions should follow the MLA ninth edition.
Potential topics to consider:
- Reconsidering Language, Experience and the Importance of Mayagüez in Yes, Mrs. Williams
- Multilingual Heritage and Poetic Voice
- Creative Responses to Williams work, life, language and experience
- Visits to Puerto Rico and Experiences with Puerto Ricans on the US mainland
- Considerations of Williams’s Puerto Rican/Caribbean Jewish Heritage
- Mapping Williams’s Transcultural Homelife in New Jersey
- Intertextuality and intercultural Poetic Influences
- Medical and Health Humanities Approaches
- Inter-American Perspectives
- Williams’s Relationship with the Spanish Language and Its Impact on His Poetic Voice
- Translating Williams: Challenges and Strategies in Rendering his Work across Languages
- Monolingual Texts, Multi/Translingual Life and Identity
- The Interplay of Translingual Sensibilities and Modernist Poetics in Williams’s Spanish-Inspired Texts
- Comparative Perspectives on Williams’s Engagement with Spanish and Puerto Rican Literary Traditions
- The Role of Translation in Shaping Williams’s Global Literary Influence
- Exploring the Nuances of Spanish Syntax and Semantics in Williams’s Translations
- The Influence of Spanish on Williams’s Lexicon, Imagery, and Thematic Concerns
- Cross-Linguistic Translation and the Preservation of Williams’s Linguistic Sensibilities
**
The special issue of the Review follows up the 2024 Biennial Conference of the Society, Crossing Borders / Cruzando Fronteras, convened at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Mayagüez February 15–17, 2024. Our gathering in Mayagüez was a significant event in the study of Williams’s contributions to poetry and literary history.
Mayagüez is the birthplace of Williams’s mother, Raquel Héléna Rose Hoheb Williams. It is also the city where his uncle and namesake, Carlos Hoheb, practiced medicine. While honoring Williams’s Hispanic heritage, the conference in Mayagüez offered poets, translators, and literary scholars the opportunity to discuss Williams’s life-long engagement with Puerto Rican literature and culture, as well as to explore a major modernist poet many contributions as a translator—including the issues of borders and translation his work raises, whether linguistic, geographic, or cultural.
