The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literature and Popular Music

This comprehensive, interdisciplinary handbook will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2027.

This collection explores how literature and popular music intersect, influence each other, and create new possibilities for artistic expression, and seeks to map the rich terrain where these two cultural forms meet. We will work from broad definitions of both literature and popular music, encompassing work from traditional novels and poetry to digital narratives and graphic novels, from classical and folk sound traditions to electric and contemporary electronic music.

We welcome contributions from both academics and practitioners that explore historical connections, contemporary developments, and future possibilities. The handbook will be organised around key themes, including historical practices, crossovers and transgressions, lyrical poetics, and technological convergence.

As digital platforms reshape both fields and audiences increasingly engage with culture across traditional boundaries, this handbook traces the deep and evolving conversation between literature and popular music. From the Beat poets’ dialogue with jazz to contemporary experiments with AI-generated lyrics, from graphic-novel memoirs of musicians to the literary subversions of hip-hop artists, it situates new creative practices within a long continuum that stretches from the Classical and Medieval traditions to the present day.

The collection will address fundamental questions about how literature and popular music shape each other:

• How do musical forms transform narrative structures?
• How does popular music draw on literary prestige and techniques?
• What new hybrid forms emerge from their convergence?
• How do technological changes, including streaming platforms and AI, reshape both fields?

Contributors will employ diverse theoretical frameworks, including (without being limited to) sound studies, media theory, cultural studies, sociology, musicology, and literary analysis to investigate these reciprocal relationships.

Suggested topics/themes for chapters (feel free to propose others):

• Intertextual exchanges between specific literary works and popular songs
• Musical structures as narrative methods in literature
• The Beats and jazz/science fiction’s influence on popular music
• Literary genres in popular music (noir, romance, speculative fiction)
• Early and pre-recording era popular music and literature
• Dub poetry and hybrid oral/musical forms
• Musicians as writers/writers as musicians
• Rock criticism and music journalism as literature
• Concept albums as novels/narrative arcs in music
• Digital platforms and convergence culture
• AI, algorithms, and new creative possibilities
• Sound, text, and technological mediation
• Global perspectives on literature-music relationships
• Pedagogical applications of literature-music connections
• Economic models and creative industries
• Popular music in graphic novels and visual narratives

Proposals/abstracts should be 350 words maximum.

Please include up to 5 keywords and a 150-word biography of the author(s) which includes an institutional affiliation.

Editorial team:

Dr Tom Attah, University of Mississippi, USA
Professor Kirsty Fairclough, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Dr Christian Lloyd, Queen’s University, Canada

Deadline for proposals: 2 February 2026.

Authors will be notified if their proposals have been accepted on 16 March 2026.

Please submit your proposal using the form on this link: https://tinyurl.com/cfcblolitpop2027