Beyond Borders: Black-Indigenous Encounters between Audre Lorde and Antonina Kymytval

Following the Beyond Borders meeting series hosted by the WGSS Department at the University of South Florida, we warmly invite submissions for a special issue of The Archive Revisited Gazette celebrating Chukchee poet Antonina Kymytval’ and her brief but profoundly resonant encounter with Audre Lorde during the 1976 Afro-Asian Writers Conference in Tashkent.

Lorde’s essay “Notes from a Trip to Russia” (Sister Outsider, 1984) and her poem “Political Relations” (Our Dead Behind Us, 1986) offer the only detailed accounts of this meeting, providing a rich starting point for reflection, creative engagement, and critical exploration.

This special issue invites contributors to explore the intertwined legacies of Black and Indigenous feminist Internationalism, shining a light on the intimate and often overlooked connections that transcend Cold War boundaries. At its heart, the issue celebrates Kymytval’s poetics, Indigenous resilience, and the bold, affective solidarities she shared with Audre Lorde—what Lorde evocatively described as “making love…through our interpreters.”

We invite contributions that illuminate or respond to:

• Antonina Kymytval’s poetry, especially its reflections on land, loss, survival, and relationality
• Kymytval’s role in Soviet Indigenous literary history and the tensions she navigated within Soviet assimilationist policies
• The erotic, intimate, and political dimensions of Lorde and Kymytval’s encounter, including the constraints of language, Cold War politics, and the briefness of their meeting
• How Lorde’s and Kymytval’s relationship invites us to rethink dominant East/West geopolitical frameworks
• Transnational feminist solidarities across racialized and colonized spaces
• Indigenous and Black poetic traditions as living archives of Internationalism
• Archival traces of Kymytval’ and the exciting possibilities for re-engaging with and re-reading her work today

We welcome a wide range of formats and voices, including (but not limited to):

• Short critical essays or reflections (500–1,200 words)
• Reflections on Kymytval’s poetry (poetic, visual, etc.)
• Interviews with scholars, translators, or Indigenous artists
• Annotated lesson plans or syllabi featuring Kymytval’ or Lorde
• Creative work: poetry, hybrid or speculative writing, visual art
• Archival vignettes or stories

This issue invites contributors to re-read Kymytval’ and reflect on what solidarity and sensuality mean across geographies, historical silences, and artistic forms.

Submission deadline for proposals or submissions: February 1, 2026. Send proposals or complete submissions to: shchurkot usf edu