Publication Guidelines

Editorial Policy

Latin American Literature Today (LALT) is a quarterly publication affiliated with World Literature Today (WLT), a journal of international literature with its home at the University of Oklahoma. LALT offers readers access to the most outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and is committed to sharing great literature on an international scale, with particular interest in the most groundbreaking literary production. In pursuit of this goal, LALT publishes translated material from WLT as well as previously unpublished texts, identified and provided by a wide network of collaborators based in various parts of Latin America. The editors accept works on literary subjects connected to contemporary Latin American literature, written in English, Spanish, and/or Portuguese. Most of our published texts are essays, book reviews, fiction, poetry, interviews, and works related to literary journalism or the Latin American chronicle.

About This Style Guide

The goal of this style guide is to standardize the formatting norms and typographical criteria of texts submitted to LALT. It also offers basic instructions on how to submit texts according to the journal’s requirements. The formal criteria presented below must be taken into account by all collaborators. The editors of LALT reserve the right to accept or decline any work received, as well as to carry out the editorial modifications they deem necessary, which will not imply any change to content.

How To Collaborate With LALT

LALT is a literary journal, not an academic journal. Submissions for any issue must not have been previously published in print or digital edition. If submitted works are being considered by another publication, the collaborator must inform the editorial team of LALT if the text is accepted by the other journal.

LALT considers only the following types of submissions:

• Literary essays, chronicles, book reviews, interviews, and translations.
• Works of creative writing, whether fiction or poetry, are accepted only from translators.
• Self-translations will not be accepted for the Fiction or Poetry sections. If you are a translator and you would like to send us your work, please see the Guidelines for Translators on our English-language webpage.

Submission Deadlines

LALT is published four times a year, with issues appearing in March, June, September, and December. 

We accept submissions year-round.

Sending Submissions

The publication proposal must be addressed to the following editors, depending on the genre and type of submission:

• Submissions in Spanish (literary essays, chronicles, and interviews): Marcelo Rioseco (Editor-in-Chief). Email: [email protected]
• Book reviews: Néstor Mendoza (Book Review Editor). Email: [email protected]
• Submissions in English: Arthur Malcolm Dixon (Managing Editor). Email: [email protected]
• Submissions in translation: Denise Kripper (Translation Editor). Email: [email protected]

Please see our Guidelines for Translators in English.

Print correspondence can be sent to our physical address. Unsolicited manuscripts received by mail that are not accepted for publication will be returned if sent with the necessary postage.

Latin American Literature Today
University of Oklahoma
780 Van Vleet Oval
Kaufman Hall, Room 105/106
Norman, Oklahoma 73019-4037
Email: [email protected]

Presenting Your Submission

When sending your submission, include in the body of your email or cover letter a brief explanation of how your text would contribute to LALT’s mission to share and promote contemporary Latin American literature. We invite all potential collaborators to read back issues of LALT, or of our sister publication WLT, to find examples of our preferred writing style for essays, interviews, articles, and book reviews.

Receipt of Submissions

LALT will acknowledge receipt of submissions in a timely manner. Given the high volume of inquiries we receive, we thank collaborators for their patience in waiting for a response regarding the acceptance of their text. Normal response time is four to six weeks.

Rights and Compensation

By agreeing to your submission’s publication in LALT, you grant LALT permission to publish the submission (or selections from it) on our website and to republish the submission later in anthologies and/or collections of content published in LALT or published elsewhere by us.

After publication, all rights to the submission revert to the author (in the case of original writing) or the translator (in the case of translations). Should the work be republished in book form or elsewhere, the contributor will credit Latin American Literature Today as the first place of publication.

At present, LALT offers no financial compensation for any submission, to either authors or translators. There is no cost to submit to LALT.

Photos And Bios

Along with the submission, the author should include a bio (ten lines max) and a photo of themselves in the highest resolution possible.

General Formatting Criteria

All documents submitted to LALT must be typed in 12-point Times New Roman font with 1.5 line spacing.

Articles, essays, and interviews must be between 1,500 and 2,200 words in length, unless otherwise approved by the editors. Book reviews must be at least 500 words and no more than 1,200 words.

All texts should include one-line spaces between paragraphs.

Articles and/or book reviews may include epigraphs, as long as they are no longer than four lines. Epigraphs should not be placed in quotation marks; they should be typed in italic, 10-point font. The name of the epigraph’s author should be included below, along with the title of the text from which the epigraph is cited in italics (optional).

Short quotes should be incorporated into the body of the text. Quotes four lines or longer may be included in a separate paragraph, indented and without quotation marks. Do not use parenthetical page citations, as in MLA style, in your submission; citations may be indicated separately or placed in a final note, if they accompany a substantive portion of the text. You may use a moderate number of quotations in other languages, particularly when their use makes a linguistic or stylistic point. Please recall that LALT is published multilingually; for this reason, we thank collaborators for including quotes in both English and the original language if a translation already exists. If the text presents linguistic difficulties (such as local expressions, regional language, etc.), please include explanatory notes to help guide our volunteer translators.

Quotation marks should generally be used for quotes. When there is a quote within a quote, please use single apostrophes. Guillemets («») will only be used if there are three levels of quotation, for the most external level. An example would be: «Juan afirmó: “lo que Pedro dijo fue: ‘hola mamá’”».

For translated quotes, use square brackets. For example: “El dijo ‘hola’” [“He said: ‘hello’”].

Hyphens (-) are to be used for prefixes. For example: ex-presidente.

Long dashes (—) are to be used for sentences interspersed within the body of the text and to indicate dialogue in Spanish-language fiction For example: —Juan dijo “hola”. “Cuando él la vio —aunque fue algo inesperado— ella supo qué le diría”.

To indicate abbreviated text within a paragraph, use square brackets. For example (© Emma Rodríguez, 2013): Para hablar de Clarice Lispector habría que inventar nuevas palabras, comprar un diccionario de lo sublime, utilizar un nuevo alfabeto. Es lo primero que se me ocurre para iniciar este recorrido […], tan especial que me atrevería a decir que, en ciertos momentos, mientras la leo, tengo la loca idea de que no es de este mundo, de este planeta, que parece haber venido de lejanías inimaginables para contarnos cuentos y para hablarnos desde lo más profundo. […]. Hay que desearlo y esperar a que sea ella la que otorgue el permiso para entrar en sus habitaciones desconocidas, en sus atmósferas flotantes, en ese río de emociones que sólo los que están dispuestos a sentir, a vibrar, pueden percibir con plenitud.

If two or more lines of poetry are cited within the body of the text, please indicate line breaks using the following notation: “podemos hacer del mar/ sitio para la escritura”.

You do not need to indicate the page number when citing the title of a short story or the name of a chapter of a novel.

Notes must be kept to a minimum, especially avoiding long, digressive comments, the use of “ibid.”, quotes referring to a single page number, etc. Essential editorial information may be incorporated into the text between parentheses, as upon first mention of a book, and subsequently omitted. It is not necessary to include a bibliography at the end of your submission.

Do not use footnotes. If notes are necessary, all articles should use endnotes.

We welcome and encourage suggestions for possible illustrations (visual art, photographs, or graphics) to accompany your text. Illustrations must be sent as 300 dpi digital files (preferably tiff or jpeg). Illustrations should include a separate list of subtitles and credits, identified clearly by number, as well as any necessary permissions allowing LALT to reproduce any text or illustration under copyright. Guidelines for fair use of copyright can be found in Chapter 4 of the CMS.

Your institutional affiliation (university or research institute) or city of residence should be included at the end of the text, aligned to the right margin in italics.

Translations

• When writing a book review on a translation, please include the translator’s name in a note at the end of the review.
• If the translation was done by the submission’s author, please indicate this in a note at the end of the article.
• If the book being reviewed was written in English or has been published in translation, the review must include quotes in English (this will be taken into account by LALT’s translators).
• Do not include translations of book titles unless an official translation has already been published. If no translation exists, leave the title in the original language.

Literary Essays

TEXT STYLE AND FORMATTING

For critical studies of contemporary authors, literary subjects, or cultural currents, we prefer “essays,” which should be written using clear, pertinent discourse and without excessive reliance on academic language, since they are intended to be read by the general public.

When writing your essay, place the title at the top of the first page and then your name on a separate line. Include an introductory paragraph (24-40 words) to give readers a clear, concise idea of the text’s subject.

Book Reviews

LALT is a literary journal directed toward an informed, but broad, readership. Therefore, book reviews published in LALT must be clear and concise, without relying on excessively specialized language.

What are we looking for? 

• Book reviews must be 500 words long at minimum and 1,200 words long at maximum.
• Book reviews should reflect the reviewer’s style and their considered opinion of the work without falling back on personal anecdotes or elements that distract from the book at hand.
• Reviews need not enter into every aspect of the work in question. Rather, they should invite and stimulate readers. We prefer reviews that offer a guide to the book and a succinct analysis, with few textual quotations (this applies to works of poetry as well as prose).
• To orient the reader, the reviewer should offer a brief summary of the literary output of the author whose work is being reviewed, preferably in the first paragraph of the review.
• Reviews should be clearly differentiated from the short essay, the biographical sketch, or the commemorative text.

Important:

• Remember that all reviews will be translated into either English or Spanish for LALT’s readers. If Spanish-language sources are cited (even if they are cited in translation to English), the reviewer must provide the Spanish-language originals.
• The use of quotations, especially in the case of poetry books, must be limited to one or two direct quotes of verse. All quotations must be well-considered.
• The reviewer themself will be responsible for providing as much bibliographical information as possible about the book being reviewed (author’s name, book title, press, country and date of publication, number of pages, and ISBN).
• As mentioned above, LALT is a literary journal dedicated to sharing contemporary Latin American literature. For this reason, books considered for review must have been published in the same year as the review itself will be published, or the previous year at maximum.
• If the reviewer realizes they will be unable to submit the review by the agreed-upon deadline, they should send an email to either (1) request that LALT accept the review after the date initially assigned or (2) cancel the review’s publication.

How do I submit a book review to LALT?

Book reviews should be submitted in Word format. The title of the Word document should be as follows:

Book title, author’s name in parentheses, underscore, reviewer’s name.
Example: El llano en llamas (Juan Rulfo)_Antonia Fernández
Format. The correct format for all LALT book review headers is as follows:
Example: Blanco nocturno. Ricardo Piglia. Barcelona: Anagrama. 2010. 304 pages.

Note on book reviews and Nota Bene 

Collaborators should be aware that LALT does NOT commit to finding reviewers for books sent to the journal, whether by presses, literary agents, translators, or authors. We do offer the possibility of including such books in our “Nota Bene” section, which appears in each issue of the journal. Those interested in this option should send the book’s bibliographic information along with a brief, descriptive text (150-200 words, citing the source if necessary) to the Editor-in-Chief of LALT ([email protected]). This descriptive text can be a quote from the book’s back cover or prologue.