Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore

Our journal has been home to great writing about folklore and folklife since 1945.

Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore is available in digital and hard copy through a variety of resources, including your New York Folklore Membership benefits.

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Current Issue

Available at your local library and in print to New York Folklore Members.

  • "Bilingual Folk Storyelling: Pura Belpré and Perez and Martina"
    by William S. Walker
  • "Cat Bennett and Milkweed Tussock Tubers: A Vision in Purple Potatoes (Among Other Kind)"
    by Camilla Ammirati
  • "Fr. Saba Shofany and the Faithway of Iconography"
    by Reyers Phillip Brusoe
  • "From the Waterfront"
    by Nancy Solomon
  • "Joanie Madden"
  • "Mohawk Hudson Folklfe Festival"
    by Anne Rappaport Berliner
  • "Obituary: Ben Raino"
    by Todd DeGarmo
  • "Obituary: Enikö Farkas"
    by Hannah Davi
  • "Poetry of Everyday Life"
    by Steve Zeitlin
  • "The Buoy Tender"
    by K. O. Wilson
  • "The Paul Bunyan of the Erie Canal"
    by Sandy Schuman
  • "Upstate"
    by Dan Berggren
  • "Writing the Songs of our Ancestors: A Folk Songwriting Process"
    by Vincent Cross

 

Join to Receive New Issues

Members of New York Folklore receive two issues each year.

Previous Volumes

The following issues are searchable on our website.

Available at your local library and in print to New York Folklore Members

Recent Volumes


We’ll be adding more to our online archive shortly.

For older volumes and volumes not listed here, review our Publications Index.

Browse The ARchives

We’re migrating our content to the web. Check it out.

Looking for Something We Haven't added Yet?

As we build our online archive, we’re happy to scan older articles for you and add them to the archive. Just let us know the exact article you’d like us to upload, and we’ll follow up. We also have print copies of many older volumes available for $15 + shipping.

Editorial Board

Todd DeGarmo, Editor and Chair
The Folklife Center at Crandall Public Library, Glens Falls

Edward Young Jun Millar, Vice-Chair and New York Folklore Board Liaison
Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University

Eric Ball
SUNY Empire State College

James Kimball
SUNY Geneseo

Elena Martinez
City Lore

 

T.C. Owens
Arts Council of the Southern Finger Lakes

David Puglia
Bronx Community College

Nancy Solomon
Long Island Traditions

Elizabeth Tucker
Distinguished Service Professor, University at Binghamton

 

Access Policy

Hard Copy:

Members of New York Folklore receive two issues each year.

Available hard copy back issues are available to New York Folklore members for $10 and to non-members for $15. To purchase a copy of a back issue, members should contact New York Folklore at info@nyfolklore.org.

Online Access 

The full text of issues of the Voices from Volume +? to 2021 is available online through the New York Folklore website, www.nyfolklore.org.

Those with access to a university library should have access through EBSCO online or ProQuest to Voices articles from 2000 to the present.

 

Open Access:

Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore is a Green open access [OA] publication. Green OA means that New York Folklore encourages authors to post pre-prints and post-prints of their contributions in temporary locations, such as personal websites, until such time as the publisher’s version is available. Authors may post publisher’s versions of their contributions to the repository of their home institution as soon as those versions are available.

Click here to read the New York Folklore’s complete Green OA policy

Information for Contributors

Submission Guidelines

We encourage contributions of original articles, news items, photographs, and any other materials relating to folklore and folklife in New York State for possible inclusion in Voices.

Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore is dedicated to publishing the content of folklore in the words and images of its creators and practitioners. The journal publishes research-based articles, written in an accessible style, on topics related to traditional art and life. It also features stories, interviews, reminiscences, essays, folk poetry and music, photographs, and artwork drawn from people in all parts of New York State. Columns on subjects such as photography, sound and video recording, legal and ethical issues, and the nature of traditional art and life appear in each issue.

Contributor FAQ

Editorial Policy

Feature Articles

Articles published in Voices represent original contributions to folklore studies. Although Voices emphasizes the folklore of New York State, the editor welcomes articles based on the folklore of any area of the world. Articles on the theory, methodology, and geography of folklore are also welcome, as are purely descriptive articles on the ethnography of folklore. In addition, Voices provides a home for “orphan” tales, narratives, and songs, whose contributors are urged to provide contextual information.

Authors are encouraged to include short personal reminiscences, anecdotes, isolated tales, narratives, songs, and other material that relates to and enhances their main article.

Typically feature articles range from 1,000 to 4,000 words and up to 6,000 words at the editor’s discretion.

Reviews and Review Essays

Books, recordings, films, videos, exhibitions, concerts, and the like are selected for review in Voices for their relevance to folklore studies or the folklore of New York State and their potential interest to a wide audience. Persons wishing to review recently published material should contact the editor at tdegarmo@sals.edu. Unsolicited reviews and proposals for reviews will be evaluated by the editor and by outside referees where appropriate. Follow the bibliographic style in a current issue of Voices.

Reviews should not exceed 750 words.

Correspondence and Commentary

Short but substantive reactions to or elaborations upon material appearing in Voices within the previous year are welcomed. The editor may invite the author of the materials being addressed to respond; both pieces may be published together. Any subject may be addressed or rebutted once by any correspondent. The principal criteria for publication are whether, in the opinion of the editor or the editorial board, the comment constitutes a substantive contribution to folklore studies, and whether it will interest our general readers. Letters should not exceed 500 words.

Style

The journal follows The Chicago Manual of Style. Consult Webster’s Third International Dictionary for questions of spelling, meaning, and usage, and avoids gender-specific terminology.

Footnotes

Endnotes and footnotes should be avoided; incorporate such information into the text. Ancillary information may be submitted as a sidebar.

Bibliographic Citations

For citations of text from outside sources, use the author-date style described in The Chicago Manual of Style. 

Language

All material must be submitted in English. Foreign-language terms (transliterated, where appropriate, into the Roman alphabet) should be italicized and followed by a concise parenthetical English gloss; the author bears responsibility for the correct spelling and orthographics of non-English words. British spellings should be Americanized. 

Publication Process

Unless indicated, New York Folklore holds copyright to all material published in Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore. With the submission of material to the editor, the author acknowledges that he or she gives Voices sole rights to its publication, and that permission to publish elsewhere must be secured by contacting New York Folklore at info@nyfolklore.org.

Copy must be a Word file, double spaced, with all pages numbered consecutively. To facilitate anonymous review of feature articles, the author’s name and biography should appear only on a separate title page. 

Tables, charts, maps, illustrations, photographs, captions, and credits should follow the main text and be numbered consecutively. All illustrations should be clean, sharp, and camera-ready. Photographs should emailed to the editor, Todd DeGarmo, at tdegarmo@sals.edu as .jpg or .tiff files. Captions and credits must be included. Written permission to publish each image must be obtained by authors from the copyright holders prior to submission of manuscripts, and the written permissions must be sent directly to the offices of New York Folklore at info@nyfolklore.org as an electronic file (PDF).

For the initial submission, send an email attachment to the Editor, Todd DeGarmo, at tdegarmo@sals.edu. Alternatively, email to info@nyfolklore.org or mail digital media to New York Folklore at 129 Jay Street, Schenectady, NY 12305. (Email submission is preferred.)

Materials are acknowledged upon receipt. The editor and two anonymous readers review manuscripts submitted as articles and the name and affiliation of the author are not shared with the reviewers.  The review process takes several weeks.

Authors receive two complimentary copies of the issue in which their contribution appears and may purchase additional copies at a discount.

Send Your Story to Voices!

Did you know that Voices publishes creative writing, including creative fiction (such as short stories), creative nonfiction (such as memoirs and life/work stories), and poetry? We also publish artistic and ethnographic photography and artwork, in addition to research-based articles on New York State folk arts and artists. If you are one of New York’s traditional artists or working in a traditional occupation—including fishing, boat building, traditional healing, instrument making, firefighting, or nursing, to name a few—please consider sharing with our readers.