The award-winning publishing platform Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora is calling for submissions for Obsidian themed issue 52.2 on “Bond of a Nation: Ekphrasis & the Promise of America.” This project highlights collective participation in the making of contemporary America through the creative, accessible, long-valued, and multidisciplinary arts practice that is ekphrasis. To highlight the ideals, values, and promise of American democracy, Obsidian will foreground this popular form of expression, involving making new art through reflection on/engagement with existing art.

Edited by Duriel E. Harris & Guest Editor D. Lenaé Littlefield

We seek meditations on works of public art, employing a broadened interpretation, including mural, sculpture, installation, etc., as well as national monuments, national parks, historic land­marks, and other sculpted spaces. We welcome poetry, fiction, nonfiction, criticism, drama, visual art, and audio/visual media in conversation with public art throughout the continental United States, Hawaii, and inhabited territories such as Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. We’re interested in a wide range of creative works—traditional, speculative, hybrid, multidisciplinary, and experimental artmaking.

We encourage makers to reflect upon the fundamental and oft-cited “unalienable rights” among the concepts buttressing the premises of the American Declaration of Independence—“Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” We encourage an exploration of four key aspects of the “Bond of a Nation” symbolized by the American flag: Valor; Innocence and Integrity; Perseverance and Justice; and Collective Flourishing.

Published in Fall 2026/Winter 2027, this special issue will feature an intergenerational variety of emerging and established artists and writers, alongside featured contributors, as we witness and respond to America’s rich 250-year legacy. At this pivotal anniversary, through ekphrasis centered on public art, we aim to honor the past making of America, shape the bounty of its present, and harness the evolving potential of its future.

For more on public art and the national park system, visit these comprehensive, searchable data­bases:

Public Art Archive at https://www.publicartarchive.org 

National Park System at https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/national-park-system.htm 

National Monuments at https://www.nps.gov/subjects/monuments/visit.htm 

Submissions for the Obsidian Digital Exhibition are considered year round.