Call for Anthology Submissions

COMPTON: Reflections on Art and the City

Editors: Jenise Miller, Kency Cornejo, and Rosalind McGary

Deadline Extended: August 31, 2024, 11:59 pm PST


Kaya Fortune, John Outterbridge (2015)

The city of Compton, California rose to global fame and notoriety through the arts. From serving as an outpost for the Black Arts Movement in the west through the Compton Communicative Arts Academy in the 1960s - 1970s to the setting for the explosive rap scene that gave the world an image of Black American life “straight outta Compton,” artists from this relatively small city defined perceptions and realities of West Coast culture and American culture broadly. With Charles Dickson’s upcoming Car Culture sculpture as a centerpiece of the largest Black public art project in the U.S. and Kendrick Lamar’s instant chart topping “diss-turned-anthem” Not Like Us, Compton artists continue to represent in significant arenas of popular arts and culture. 


The anthology, Compton: Reflections on Art and the City, aims to analyze the intellectual and creative contributions of Compton artists and their works and explore the city of Compton as an important site of artistic and historical production. We seek essays and criticism that interpret and evaluate recognized and underrecognized Compton artists and their individual or collective bodies of work within the contexts of larger artistic movements, artistic and cultural impact, and intersections of art, place, and culture. We are interested in submissions that engage the following themes and welcome relevant submissions outside of these categories: 


  • Compton and the Literary Imagination: analyzing works by authors from Compton and representations of Compton in literature

  • Compton Visual Artists and Art: analyzing works by visual artists from Compton and/or works inspired, reflected, or represented by the city 

  • Compton Freestyle: exploring stories and works in Compton contributions to music, dance, and movement

  • Compton Off the Wall: exploring Compton public art and architecture histories   

  • Compton Unscripted: exploring Compton in film and theater and/or the works of filmmakers from the city

  • Compton Culture(s): exploring creative practices in Compton culture and living (e.g. family/community archives, fashion trends, hobbies, gatherings/events, placemaking, etc.) beyond or across the above categories and/or that address specific socio-political (e.g. arts and activism, groups or collectives, community organizing, etc.) or other themes through an artistic lens

  • Compton Futurities: exploring art and creative practices that center speculative or futuristic narratives, technologies, and possibilities and/or envision Compton through the lens of Afrofuturism, Indigenous futurism, and/or Latinx futurism


We seek submissions that expand our collective understanding of the city and its artists and their creative works, lineages, and stories. Submissions should draw upon research and/or lived experiences and be written in accessible language for wide audiences. We are open to submissions from emerging and experienced writers and critics residing in the United States. Writers will be compensated for the publication of their work. We may also be able to assist with the cost of image reproduction fees and accessing archival images and photographic scans.  


The anthology builds upon the Sēpia Collective “Reading the City” conversations with artists from Compton and related essays cross-published in the Compton: Arts and Archives series. 


Submission Form: 

Thank you for your interest. This call is now closed.


Editors will be in contact after the submission period closes. Writers whose summaries are accepted will be asked to submit a full draft within 4 weeks of notification of acceptance.


Please email any questions to anthology@thecomptonartsproject.org.


About the Editors:


Jenise Miller

Jenise Miller is a writer and urban planner from Compton, California. Her work explores art, archives, mapping, and intersectional history. She coordinates several projects on Compton arts, including the History of Compton Arts Interview Project, and edits the KCET Artbound article series, “Compton: Art and Archives.” She is a former California Arts Council Artist Fellow and a Tin House and VONA workshop alum. She has led community based participatory research and GIS mapping projects and was a research consultant on the book “South Central Dreams: Finding Home and Building Community in South L.A.” She has held fellowships with the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, PEN America, Women’s National Book Association, and was the inaugural DSTL Arts Poet/Artist in Residence in Compton. A Pushcart-nominated poet, her writing is published in her poetry chapbook, The Blvd, as well as in High Country News, The Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and the forthcoming anthology, Writing the Golden State: The New Literary Terrain of California, with Angel City Press. She is the daughter of Black Panamanian immigrants and grew up in the Panamanian community in Compton and Los Angeles. 


Kency Cornejo

Kency Cornejo is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of New Mexico where she teaches Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art Histories. Her teaching, research, and publications focus on contemporary art of Central America and its US-based diaspora, art and activism in Latin America, and decolonizing methodologies in art. Some of her publications on US/Central American art can be found in the Journal of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture; Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies; Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies; and Art and Documentation, among others. She is author of the book Visual Disobedience: Art and Decoloniality in Central America, forthcoming with Duke University Press (Oct. 2024), which analyzes thirty years of art and decoloniality in the isthmus. Her work has been supported by the Fulbright and Ford foundations, an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, a National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Award Grant, among others. She holds a PhD from Duke University, an MA from UT Austin, and BA from UCLA. Kency was born to Salvadoran immigrant parents and raised in Compton, California. 



Rosalind McGary


Rosalind has been a working artist for over 30 years. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in History of Art.  She is the founder of the Compton-based Sēpia Artist Collective, through which she has produced the multi-city ICONIC: Black Panther exhibitions, the largest group art exhibitions to date interpreting the Black Panther Party through the lens of contemporary artists.    Rosalind co-founded the non-profit Cakecutter Institute, which centers the stories and practices of artists of color, and is the fiscal partner for The Compton Arts Project.  McGary is The Compton Arts Project's creative director, which leverages art's transformative power for community development.  Rosalind lives and works in Compton, California.