Archives
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General Issue
Vol. 50 No. 1 (2024)Featuring new poetry, fiction/hybrid work, drama/performance, visual art & Furious Flower Poetry Prize, 2023, Evie Shockley, Judge
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Speculating Futures: Black Imagination & the Arts
Vol. 42 No. 1 & 2 (2016)Obsidian’s fall 2016 double-issue explores speculative genres and is edited by Sheree Renée Thomas and Nisi Shawl (short fiction, drama, poetry), Isiah Lavender III (essays), and Krista Franklin (art, visual media, and paraliterature). All artists ask “what if?”, explore the consequences of “if this continues,” and contemplate “if only;” however, practitioners of the speculative arts or Afrofuturism—an umbrella term for science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, fabulism, horror, and unclassifiable and interstitial creative works such as slipstream—ask the same question and respond with an answer that re-imagines whole worlds and goes beyond the known universe.
Afrofuturism and the speculative arts may transport audiences to a planet light-years away,to alternate histories and identities, or deep inside the jewel-toned caves of a far-distant past, another consciousness. Whether extrapolating science and society to imagine futuristic technology, art, and socio-political configurations, or conjuring new forms of magic, these genres imagine what might have been or what might be, opening the door to any possibility.
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Call & Response: Experiments in Joy and Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry
Vol. 41 No. 1 & 2 (2015)A full-color double issue has the special features "Call & Response: Experiments in Joy," guest edited by Gabrielle Civil and Ebony Noëlle Golden, and "Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry," guest edited by Meta DuEwa Jones, Keith D. Leonard, and giovanni singleton, as well as general issue content. -
Selections From Obsidian at North Carolina State University
Vol. 14 No. 2 (2013)For thirty years, Obsidian has called North Carolina State home. While, as some wise African in America noted, this goodbye “ain’t gone,” it is also worth noting that—as only Octavia Butler might insist that I note—that Obsidian has transformed those she has encountered at North Carolina State University.
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“Nothing but Music:” A Tribute to Jazz, Literature and Amiri Baraka
Vol. 14 No. 1 (2013)This special issue of Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, with guest editor Darrell Stover, is focused on the intersections among jazz, literature and performance. This issue is also a tribute to the poetry and genius of Amiri Baraka, whose influence on the poetic arc of Darrell Stover is only one of numerous examples of Baraka’s generosity and mentorship. The offerings in this issue connect with the vibrancy of Baraka’s spirit. As a central figure in the Black Arts Movement, jazz poetry was a part of the rhythmic dynamic of Baraka’s life. This issue, then, celebrates the marriage of these art forms.
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Violence and Black Youth in the Post-Civil Rights United States
Vol. 13 No. 2 (2012)The moments and movements that define America’s shared, national history can often be documented through the graphic violence enacted on the bodies of Black children. In this special issue of Obsidian, guest edited by Jennifer Griffiths, we enter the conversation about endangered Black children with this volume entitled “Violence and Black Youth in the Post-Civil Rights United States.”
