Call for Pitches for TIDAL

C162—Winter 2026

Accepted until: May 16, 2025

For this issue, we begin from Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite’s conception of tidalectics, which he describes as being “like our grandmother’s–our nana’s–action, like the movement of the ocean she’s walking on, coming from one continent/continuum, touching another, and then receding (‘reading’) from the island(s) into the perhaps creative chaos of the(ir) future.” Brathwaite troubles any easy binary distinction that would separate land from water, and instead prompts us to think through the two categories together, particularly in the archipelagic space of the Caribbean. This helps us trouble colonial logics that separate the land (organized into nation-states and private property) from water. Like the ebb and flow of waves hitting the shore, or the edge between land and sea, we seek capacious engagements with “Tidal”– that which becomes possible when we dissolve colonial binaries. We invite pitches that take up fluidity, borderlessness, the oceanic, and movement and its metaphors in cultural production. What else, more than water, can be tidal?

Thematic feature, artist project, and column pitches accepted until May 16, 2025. Review pitches, not required to be on theme, are accepted on a rolling basis.

Send pitches to pitch@cmagazine.com, with a subject line that starts with the word PITCH and indicates the submission type (review, essay, interview, One Thing, for example).

Please include ~150 words about your subject and how you’ll approach it, along with hyperlinks wherever relevant. An estimated word count is appreciated. If you have not written for us recently, include a link to your website—or a copy of your CV—and one or two writing samples (ideally ones in a style similar to your pitched piece). We do not publish reprints or previously written pieces. Please see our writer’s guidelines for more information.