Call for Special Issue
Call for Special Issue — Honoring Michele Shaul
We are dedicating our Summer 2027 Special Issue to our dear colleague, mentor, and friend Michele Shaul, who passed from this life on Monday, October 27, 2025. Michele founded Label Me Latina/o in 2011 with Kathryn Quinn-Sánchez to center Latina/o/x/e experiences and showcase Latinex writers in an open-access online environment. She co-directed the literary journal from its inception until her passing and always referred to it as her favorite labor of love. Michele was many things: she was a mother, grandmother, wife, scholar, teacher, advocate, mentor, and friend. She worked tirelessly to amplify the voices and experiences of Latinex students, writers, and artists. We know how proud Michele was of Label Me Latina/o and the many important voices it has showcased in the last 14 years.
As such, for this special issue, we invite Michele’s students, mentees, colleagues, and friends to submit essays/poems/reflections in memory of Michele. We are open to a variety of styles and formats for these remembrances, though we do ask, given the nature of the medium, that the use of visual images be kept to a minimum and that the author has copyright or copyright permission for any image use.
Original, unpublished submissions in Microsoft Word should be sent electronically to Melissa Birkhofer and Lorna L. Perez at labelmelatinejournal@gmail.
-Lorna L. Perez and Melissa Birkhofer
