Call for Submissions: The Black SWANA Issue
- 06/01/2022
Event details
For our winter 2022 issue, guest-edited by Safia Elhillo, we are seeking works that demonstrate the infinitely varied and kaleidoscopic nature of the Black SWANA experience. The work itself does not have to be about the Black SWANA experience— rather, through the range of themes, forms, genres, and voices, we hope to assemble an issue that serves as a platform for critical exchange between authors and as a record of the current moment as it pertains to the Black SWANA experience.
In this issue, we are interested in focusing specifically on work by people from Black SWANA communities and their diasporas, to create a gathering space for our voices and ideas. Given the distinctive histories, languages, realities, and cultural legacies that exist within the Black SWANA community, this issue asks what political, aesthetic, and cultural futures are possible when we gather together? What traditions does our work follow, and what traditions can we create together? How do we find our way to each other and build there? What gentler world can we imagine for ourselves? What language(s) can we conjure together from the particulars of our intersections? What language(s) can we break open to make room for our names?
Literary works of poetry, visual poetry, fiction, flash fiction, nonfiction, creative nonfiction, comics, collage, invented forms, and any forms of mixed print or hybrid work will all be considered.
Those submitting work should identify as Black, as we seek work that is not simply of relevance to or in dialogue with the social realities of the Black SWANA community but coming from within it. Submitters may also decide to expand these social realities.
Selected contributors receive a $200 honorarium, a one year subscription to Mizna, and five copies of the issue.