Special issue Vol39 of Doris Lessing Studies was published. Congratulations to the editors and contributors.

The Phyllis Perrakis Student Essay Contest

The Doris Lessing Society Student Essay Contest has been renamed in honor of Phyllis Perrakis, a long-time member of the Society, former president of the Doris Lessing Society, and former co-editor of Doris Lessing Studies, who passed away in 2018.

Among her many publications, she co-edited with Debrah Raschke and Sandra Singer, Doris Lessing: Interrogating the Times (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2010). She also edited Adventures of the Mind: The Older Woman in the Works of Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, and Other Contemporary Women Writers (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007) and Spiritual Exploration in the Works of Doris Lessing (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999).

Launch of the 2025 Edition

The Doris Lessing Society invites current and recent graduate students as well as upper-level undergraduate students to submit an essay on the work of Doris Lessing. Professors are invited to nominate essays by current or recent graduate students, or students may submit their work independently.
The winning essay will be considered for publication in Doris Lessing Studies, the Society’s peer-reviewed journal.

How to submit

• Essay written between January 2024 and May 2025
• 3000 words minimum (MLA standards)
• MS Word attachment
• Submission by e-mail to: dls.student.essay.contest@gmail.com

Timelines

• Deadline for submission: May 15, 2025
• Review: May 16th – June 30th, 2025
• Results: by e-mail, early July 2025
• Winner must have their essay ready for possible publication by September 1, 2025

Contact: dls.student.essay.contest@gmail.com

Doris Lessing Studies, Volume 38, is out and posted on the website! It’s a special issue, The South Asian Pursuit of Doris Lessing, guest-edited by Swaty Mitra and Ujjal Jeet of Doris Lessing Society, South Asia. Members of the DLS can access the new issue from the password protected portion of our website. You can fill out and submit the membership form here and find the issue’s Table of Contents here.

For members of the Modern Language Association who are registered for the 2025 Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, here are the details of our session. It will be the Society’s first in-person MLA session since 2020, and all of the participants will be traveling long distances to get there. Please help to publicize it by sharing this widely among your MLA networks.

Date: Saturday, 11 January, 2025
Time & Place: 3:30-4:45 pm, Churchill C1 (Hilton Riverside New Orleans)

Session 605. Confinement and Freedom in Doris Lessing and Other Twentieth-Century Writers
Presiding: Seda Arikan, Firat U
–“Comrade Tigger: Navigating Visible Identity under Colonial Confinement in Doris Lessing’s Archive,” Anna Devereux, U of East Anglia
–“Quandaries of Femininity and Darkness Unspoken in The Summer Before the Dark,” Xuan Yao, Beijing Foreign Studies U
–“Reading the Past, Seeing the Future: Prescience and Prisons We Choose to Live Inside,” Terry Reilly, U of Alaska, Fairbanks
Our session has been chosen to be part of the 2025 Presidential Theme: Visibility.