The Editor’s Notes

Abstract

The Editor’s Notes Charles Henry Rowell The number of positive responses I received from my initial call for literary manuscripts for a special Texas issue of Callaloo was not only surprising but also very much affirming. That is, most of the Texas writers I invited to contribute to the special number of the journal did so without question or hesitation. In fact, I received an inordinate number of very fine manuscripts—too many to accommodate in a periodical project. I had planned only to publish one number of Callaloo as the special Texas project, but I had to create a second number—the current issue—for prose fiction writing. In spite of that division, I still was not able to publish all of the manuscripts that I would have printed if space had allowed me to do so. The positive responses to my call for manuscripts also signified the need of a three-day program (March 2–4, 2009) to celebrate Texas writers through readings, personal exchanges, panel discussions, and a keynote address by the legendary Edward Hirsch, who is the current president of the Guggenheim Foundation and who—as far as I have been able to discern—built the highly touted creative writing program at the University of Houston. “Callaloo Salutes Texas Writers,” the program Callaloo organized and mounted on the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, brought together an array of multicultural and multiethnic Texas writers, as kaleidoscopic as the bird metaphor that drives Edward Hirsch’s keynote address. His address, “Prairie Warblers & Bohemian Waxwings: A Keynote Address,” printed in full in this issue, was delivered at the dinner that launched the Texas writers project. Complementing Hirsch’s keynote address are the responses of some of our conference participants to the event and the issues it celebrated. Of course, the participants, some of whose remarks are reproduced below, are in a much better position than I to assess the Texas project, and I am very much encouraged by their assessment: a number of them privately advised—and I proposed at the dinner event—that Callaloo should sponsor a Texas writers conference every two or three years. This issue also contains a special section on Callaloo’s first critics’ and writers’ retreat, which was held March 5–8, 2008, at Tulane University in New Orleans. I organized these retreats as an ongoing exchange between creative writing and literary and cultural studies in the African Diaspora. The second retreat took place March 23–28, 2009, at Washington University in St. Louis, and a third meeting is planned for May, 2010, at the University of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. [End Page 337] Copyright © 2009 Charles H. Rowell