Yams and Sweet Potatoes is an art, culture, and literary magazine founded in the spring of 2024 by two young Black women in Houston, Texas. Fused by the iconography what both connects and divides us, the yam and sweet potato, the magazine focuses on curating and cataloging the ‘Black creative imagination’. Thus has publishing domains across various artistic forms, including poetry, short stories, visual media, interviews, creative non-fiction, essays, letters, plays, and hybrid work.
Currently, the magazine publishes annually. For more information on our editorial board, you can also check out our masthead. We’re always looking for volunteer editorial staff, so if you’re interested in joining our team, please visit our openings page for more information. If you’d like to submit your work, be sure to read our submission guidelines
As a part of the strategic editorial vision for the magazine, our first three full-length issues will be combined into an anthology project entitled Yams and Sweet Potatoes: The Anthology. The anthology will be a creative and artistic amalgamation of the culture inherent in the sights and sounds of the ‘Black South,’ taking the reader on a journey through what has been lost, found, and yet to be discovered.
I wanted to be able to come here and speak with you today because you are young, gifted, and black…. And I for one, can think of no more dynamic combination that a person might be.
-Lorraine Hansberry
Yams and Sweet Potatoes is dedicated to publishing, supporting, and centering the creative work of young, Black, emerging writers and artists. However, we accept submissions from all creatives who choose to engage with our themes. We strive to provide an open and welcoming space for creatives who may not yet have had the opportunity to publish their work elsewhere. We aim to uplift and engage artistic communities of young Black people across the country, especially in the South, who may consider themselves non-traditional artists, conversational or spoken word poets, ‘not entirely’ writers, or only occasionally creatives.
The magazine encourages writers to share their truths, dreams, and experiences through prose, visual art, poetry, and everything in between. It especially welcomes work that engages with feminism(s), queerness or sexual identity, gender identity, history, time, trauma, space, geography, migration, body politics, Blackness, healthy masculinity, and love. Through our pages, you will find a rich tapestry of voices, stories brought from margin to center, and a literary and artistic feast for both your mind and spirit.
The magazine is dedicated to publishing and supporting art that humanizes, affirms, and stands in solidarity with Black arts, humanities, lived experiences, and expressions of joy. We do not tolerate creative work in any form that perpetuates racism, racist stereotypes, graphic depictions of violence against marginalized bodies, sexual violence, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, ableism, transphobia, colorism, texturism, or fatphobia. You are welcome to engage with these paradigms and examine how their influence has shaped your lived experiences, but our editors reserve the right to refuse any piece that we believe imposes these ideals rather than critique them.
To remain accessible to the communities we serve, submitting to Yams and Sweet Potatoes is free, and we provide published writers with a free digital copy of our publication. As part of a submission, your work will be considered for our internal awards, which recognize the best work from the magazine, published digitally on our website and social platforms, along with a full-length interview with the writer. We recognize that acknowledging the talent and brilliance of our community is crucial for marginalized artists to find work as creatives. Additionally, we strive to submit the published work of all our writers to external awards and commit to supporting artists through external nomination and award processes.
Rights to creative work remain with the artist, though by submitting if selected, you grant Yams and Sweet Potatoes temporary publication rights for inclusion in our magazine and subsequent anthology. If you are published in the magazine or the anthology, please keep in mind that you must list Yams and Sweet Potatoes as the first publisher when submitting the piece elsewhere. To support the magazine’s work and our writers, you can either become a subscriber or contribute to our “Buy the Editors a Coffee” campaign.
Yams & Sweet Potatoes is a mixed-media creative publication dedicated to publishing and supporting the work of young, Black writers and artists, especially those based in the American South. We publish one issue a year and are Black woman-owned and founded.
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