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Rowayat
@rowayat.bsky.social
SWANA/ARAB literary journal. Rowayat.org is seeking original writing for our upcoming online publications. Submission categories are fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, flash fiction, comics, art, reviews and interviews – in English, French or Arabic.
Pinned
🚨 New Deadline: November 7, 2025
Rowayat’s Issue 13: Forged Kinship is still open for submissions.

• Fiction (short stories, scripts, novel excerpts)
• CNF (essays, memoirs, hybrid forms)
• Poetry & Flash
• Visual Art
• Comics
• Writing Central
rowayat.submittable.com/submit
🚨 New Deadline: November 7, 2025
Rowayat’s Issue 13: Forged Kinship is still open for submissions.

• Fiction (short stories, scripts, novel excerpts)
• CNF (essays, memoirs, hybrid forms)
• Poetry & Flash
• Visual Art
• Comics
• Writing Central
rowayat.submittable.com/submit
October 26, 2025 at 1:17 AM
Announcing Rowayat’s 2025 Poetry Contest Shortlist!

Aida Bardissi – Recipe for عيش بلدي
Haseeb Sultan – the soil under our house was once the Indus
Kimberly Gibson-Tran – Imago Dei
Paul Potts – i have
Ruaa Hassouna*, tr. Alice S. Yousef* – Untitled

Winner to be announced Oct 31 🎉
October 22, 2025 at 1:35 PM
SUBMIT NOW: Rowayat Issue 13 — Forged Kinship
Open until Oct 22, 2025

Meet our Guest Editors: rowayat.org/issue-13-for...

Submit poetry, fiction, CNF, translations, reviews, hybrid & art:
rowayat.submittable.com/submit

#CallForSubmissions #Rowayat #ForgedKinship #SWANAvoices #GlobalSouthWriters
September 30, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Reposted by Rowayat
Writing organizations play a vital role in shaping the literary landscape. Recognize any that have made a significant impact by nominating them for the 2026 AWP Writing Organization Award; nominations are open to all until 11:59 p.m. ET on October 31.
AWP Writing Organization Award
Nominations for the 2026 AWP Writing Organization Award open September 1, 2025, and will be accepted until October 31, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. ET.
awpwriter.secure-platform.com
September 30, 2025 at 7:01 PM
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Look at me, mom!
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs is thrilled to announce @moeshalabi.bsky.social as a recipient of the Go Finish Your Book! Grant, a brand-new initiative from James Patterson. Read more about Shalabi’s winning project in our latest Writer’s News piece. awpwriter.org/AWP/Magazine...
Mohamed Shalabi, Writer to Writer Mentee, Awarded Go Finish Your Book! Grant
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs is thrilled to announce Mohamed Shalabi as a recipient of the Go Finish Your Book! Grant, a brand-new initiative from James Patterson.
awpwriter.org
September 8, 2025 at 2:24 AM
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🚨 Announcing Rowayat’s 2025 Poetry Contest!
Submit your unpublished poems (1–3, max 5 pages) between Aug. 1st–31st rowayat.submittable.com/submit
July 26, 2025 at 9:27 PM
🚨 Announcing Rowayat’s 2025 Poetry Contest!
Submit your unpublished poems (1–3, max 5 pages) between Aug. 1st–31st rowayat.submittable.com/submit
July 26, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Reposted by Rowayat
Check it out to read my three featured poems!
Rowayat Issue 12: Echoes is here.
71 voices rising in chorus.
Poems, essays, stories, and translations—each piece a heartbeat, a memory, a call.

Built by editors, readers, writers across borders.

Come read. Come echo.

🔗 rowayat.org/tag/issue-12/
#Rowayat #Echoes
Issue #12 Echoes - Rowayat
Fiction, Poetry, CNF, Author Interviews, Book Reviews, Art, Comics, SWANA, Global South, Feminists
rowayat.org
July 13, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Rowayat Issue 12: Echoes is here.
71 voices rising in chorus.
Poems, essays, stories, and translations—each piece a heartbeat, a memory, a call.

Built by editors, readers, writers across borders.

Come read. Come echo.

🔗 rowayat.org/tag/issue-12/
#Rowayat #Echoes
Issue #12 Echoes - Rowayat
Fiction, Poetry, CNF, Author Interviews, Book Reviews, Art, Comics, SWANA, Global South, Feminists
rowayat.org
July 13, 2025 at 2:12 PM
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Rowayat has translated three of my Arabic poems into English in their twelfth issue, Echoes!

rowayat.org/beiruts-sett...

#Arabic #Arab #MENA #Lebanon #Poetry #Poem #WritingCommunity #PublishingNews
Beirut's setting sun & Others - Rowayat
Beirut’s setting sun Do you remember the last time Beirut’s sun—dawned on us?It was beforethe sky was wrapped,in…
rowayat.org
June 25, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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See my newly published poem “Toward” in issue 12 of @rowayat.bsky.social
It’s a true story about my heroic mom and what happened after a church ski trip: rowayat.org/toward/
June 11, 2025 at 4:45 PM
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Montreal launch for The Sacred Heart Motel by Grace Kwan is coming up! In the BC-based poet’s debut, they are ruthless and nimble, guiding us through the recesses of body and roadside space. Dec 6, 7pm at Co-op Agenda. Also feat. special guests Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch & Carlos A. Pittella.
November 20, 2024 at 1:51 AM
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Now you are alone
says the wall that comes at night,
there will be no knocks at the door
no pats on the shoulder,
the roads that led to your dreams
lie shattered, splayed
like corpses on the arid ground.

arablit.org/2023/10/26/n...
New Poetry in Translation: Ghassan Zaqtan’s ‘Everything Knows You Will Rise’
“Everything Knows You Will Rise” appeared on October 23, 2023, in al-Ayyaam. The art published with this poem is from the cover Zaqtan’s The Silence That Remains, tr. Fady Joudah. Everything...
arablit.org
October 26, 2023 at 12:20 PM
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Palestinian Prison Memoir Becomes Unlikely Topic at 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair - by Olivia Snaije for @arablit.bsky.social

arablit.org/2023/10/23/p...
Palestinian Prison Memoir Becomes Unlikely Topic at 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair
By Olivia Snaije This is a story about many stories. It begins with the Nakba, occupation, and imprisonment, but it’s also about courageous publishers and an upcoming memoir, The Tale of a Wall, tr�...
arablit.org
October 23, 2023 at 9:10 AM
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Wonderful news!!! Gazan Poet Mosab Abu Toha Wins Derek Walcott Prize for 'Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear' arablit.org/2023/11/03/g... via @arablit.bsky.social
Gazan Poet Mosab Abu Toha Wins Derek Walcott Prize for ‘Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear’
NOVEMBER 3, 2023 — Arrowsmith Press, in conjunction with Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and The Walcott Festival yesterday announced the winner of the third annual Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry…
arablit.org
November 3, 2023 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Rowayat

"So for me, for people my age who have never left Gaza, if you ask them ‘how big is the world’? They might answer ‘maybe it’s 10 or 100 times bigger than Gaza?’, because Gaza is their limit. I think geography and our sense of the world is distorted."
arablit.org/2023/11/08/a...
A Conversation with Derek Walcott Prize-winning Poet Mosab Abu Toha
This conversation originally ran last year, in November 2022, after Mosab Abu Toha won a 2022 Palestine Book Award for Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. Last week, the collecti��...
arablit.org
November 8, 2023 at 6:51 AM
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Arab publishing groups withdraw from Frankfurt Book Fair after award for Palestinian author pulled
The planned literature prize to Adania Shibli was scrapped over the Israel-Gaza war.
Arab groups withdraw from Frankfurt Book Fair after award for Palestinian author pulled
Sharjah and Egyptian publishing associations cancel attendance after Adania Shibli's planned prize scrapped
www.thenationalnews.com
October 14, 2023 at 4:45 PM
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My favorite Arab writer -- I'm only missing his early short story collection.

Literature can make the difference between "oh, another war in Lebanon" and "oh no, another war in Lebanon!"
October 16, 2023 at 4:43 PM
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Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature is a digital-born project that seeks to retrace and remap the global story of Palestinian literature in the 20th century, starting from the Arab world, & going through Europe, North America, and Latin America

countryofwords.org
October 18, 2023 at 5:52 PM