In a world where belonging is fractured and ties are continually redefined, kinship is something we create for ourselves —through endurance and what we imagine together, through moments, memory, and mutual care. For Issue 13 of Rowayat, we invite work that explores how bonds are forged, mended, or broken when identity and memory are threatened or erased.
We welcome submissions that might:
-trace ancestry, memory, and voice
-reveal solidarity across borders
-witness resilience amidst displacement and violence
– imagine new forms of belonging
– reflect on repair and re-creation
Send us poetry, fiction, essays, hybrid forms, and visual art that engage these ideas. Surprise us with work that stretches the meaning of kinship—personal or collective, intimate or cosmic—while staying true to the urgency of our times.
We are open for submissions from Sep. 22nd-Nov. 7th 2025
Meet Rowayat’s Guest Editors for Issue #13: Forged Kinship:
Fatima ElKalay is Rowayat’s Issue 13 Managing Editor
Fatima ElKalay has been captivated by poetry since the age of six, and her journey as a poet, translator, and editor has spanned over three decades. She has been the backbone of Rowayat since its inception over a decade ago, helping to shape its literary vision with her deep commitment to storytelling and poetic expression. After serving as Poetry Editor for multiple issues, Fatima has now taken the helm as Managing Editor of Issue 12, bringing her meticulous eye, creative energy, and unwavering dedication to the role.
Fatima holds an M.Litt in Creative Writing from Central Queensland University, where she honed her craft as both a poet and storyteller. Her work has earned critical acclaim, including being shortlisted for the London Independent Story Prize and the ArabLit Story Prize for short fiction in translation.
Beyond editing, Fatima is a prolific translator of Arabic literature, committed to bridging cultures through words. Most recently, she translated the first two chapters of Mansoura Ez-Eldin’s Akhilat Al-Dhil (Shadow Spectres), which was published for the first time in English in The Markaz Review. Her translation work extends across poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, amplifying voices that might otherwise remain unheard.
In 2022, Fatima published her first collaborative collection, Dessert for Three, a genre-blending exploration of fiction and memoir. She is also the author of Basel’s First Trip, a children’s story featured in issue 9 of Rowayat Gemeza for Young Readers. With her deep literary expertise and editorial leadership, Fatima continues to shape Rowayat’s evolving narrative, ensuring that each issue resonates with powerful, diverse voices from the region and beyond.
Tāriq Malik is Rowayat’s Issue 13 Fiction Editor
Tāriq Malik (Thaa-Rik) [he/him/his]طارق ملک ਤਾਰਿਕ ਮਲਿਕ तारिक मलिक 塔里克·马利克
Pakistani-born Vancouver-based DesiPOC author Tāriq Malik has worked across poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and visual arts for the past four decades to distill immersive and original narratives. As a marginalized creator, he writes intensely in response to the world in flux around him and his place in its shadows.
He claims to have come reluctantly late to these shores, having to first survive three wars, two migrations, and two decades of slaving in the Kuwaiti desert before landing here.
He has authored a collection of short stories, Rainsongs of Kotli, TSAR publications, 2004; a novel, Chanting Denied Shores, Bayeux Arts, 2010; and poetry published under Unmooring the Komagata Maru, UBC Press, 2019. His recent poetry publications by Caitlin Press include Exit Wounds, 2022, and Blood of Stone, 2024 (currently on the Short List for 3rd Annual Book Awards for BC Authors Contest.)
His writing has appeared or will appear in Salzburg Poetry Review #43, The Puritan, The Polyglot Magazine, Rice Paper, TWUC’s Write Magazine, The Aleph Review, and Verbal Art (July 2019), among others.
He has been the Writer-in-Residence at the Historic Joy Kogawa House (July 2023), and is the current Writer-in-Residence at The Polyglot Magazine. He is the Poetry Editor of the Rice Paper magazine, and the Canadian Editor of the online Haiku magazine Espacio Luna Alfanje.
Tahia Abdel Nasser is Rowayat’s Issue 13 Nonfiction Editor
Tahia Abdel Nasser is a writer and scholar. She is the author of two books, Latin American and Arab Literature: Transcontinental Exchanges and Literary Autobiography and Arab National Struggles, and the editor of Nasser: My Husband. Her fiction has appeared in New World Writing, Rigorous, Oyster River Pages, and more. She has held the position of associate professor and chair of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo. She is currently working on a memoir and her first novel.
Mohamed Seif El Nasr is Rowayat’s Issue 13 Fiction Editor
He is a writer and editor from Cairo, Egypt, with an academic background in history and political science. After over a decade in corporate banking, he changed paths to pursue a career in writing. His work includes several historical and political essays for publications such as Mada Masr, Mondoweiss, Truthout, and others.
Then He Sent Prophets, his debut historical novel, was published by Daraja Press in 2024 and is forthcoming in Arabic from the Arab Cultural Center in 2027. It has been praised in ArabLit, The New Arab, Middle East Monitor, Rowayat, and The Historical Novels Review.
His website is www.mohamedseifelnasr.com, and he can be found on Instagram at @moseifelnasr.
Nour Kamel is Rowayat’s Issue 13 Poetry Editor
Nour Kamel is a writer, editor, and baker from Egypt working through the poetics of food, family, community, oppression, language, queerness & gender. They believe in a free Palestine. Their chapbook ‘Noon’ is part of the New-Generation African Poets series and their writing can be found in ANMLY, World Literature Today, Sinister Wisdom, The Shade Journal and Mizna among others. They organize experimental collaborations, writing & research with Kusbarra Collective.
Alice S. Yousef is Rowayat’s Issue 13 Poetry Editor
Alice S. Yousef is a Jerusalem-born, Palestinian translator, blogger, researcher and poet, who has published short stories, poetry and translations. Her work can be found on various web magazines, including Twopoetswrite and VisualVerse. She holds a Master’s in Writing from Warwick University (UK) and is a fellow of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program for the year 2016. She is currently working on her first volume of poetry. She tweets @Aliceyousef.
Mohsen Mohamed is Rowayat’s Issue 13 Arabic literature in Translation Editor
Mohsen Mohamed is an award-winning poet whose works have been featured in prominent journals and magazines such as Cordite, Poetry Magazine, Media Part, NRC, and others.
He’s an Arabic in translation editor at Rowayat and has participated in numerous literary festivals. In 2014, Mohsen was arrested on the fringes of a protest on the campus of Mansoura University, where he was a first-year student. Although he had no involvement with the protest, Mohsen spent five years in the Egyptian prison system before being released in early 2019. During his time inside, he completed his university degree and wrote his first poetry collection, Mafeesh raqam birudd مفيش رقم بيرد (No One Is on the Line). This collection won the Sawiris Cultural Award and the Cairo International Book Fair Prize for vernacular poetry under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture despite his imprisonment.
He is currently working on another collection of poems around the theme of identity and exile as well as having published several articles around these themes. When Mohsen is depressed, he tries to solve a mathematical problem which he can’t, and he gets depressed even more. Mohsen loves to travel; he says, “He was a bit incarcerated, but he is, now, so free.”
Leila Farjami is Rowayat’s Issue 13 Poetry Editor
Leila Farjami is an Iranian-American poet, translator and psychotherapist. Her debut poetry collection, Daughter of Salt, an Editor’s Selection at Trio House Press, is forthcoming in July 2026.
She is the recipient of The Iowa Review Award in Poetry (2025), The Cincinnati Review’s Schiff Award in Poetry (2024), and PEN America’s Emerging Voices Fellowship (2025). Her work has been recognized as a finalist for the Prufer Poetry Prize from Pleiades, the Trio House Press Award, the Perugia Press Prize, Southern Indiana Review‘s Michael Waters Poetry Prize. She has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, Swamp Pink, AGNI, The Cincinnati Review, The Mississippi Review, Southern Indiana Review, Southern Humanities Review, and in anthologies from Sundress and Guernica Editions, among others. She lives in Los Angeles. https://www.leilafarjami.com
Saty Mukherjee is Rowayat’s Editorial Communication Coordinator
Saty Mukherjee (They/Them) is an emerging copy-editor and writer born in India but raised in the quiet suburbs of New Jersey. They currently work part-time as an English Tutor and as a reader for Wallstrait, Chestnut Review, and The Common. They take inspiration from many places, ranging from the quiet aisles of a grocery store, the sprawling landscapes of the video games they play, and the powerful stories in the books they read. Although their work is yet to be published, they look forward to sharing their voice with a broader audience in the near future. On the days they aren’t working, they can often be found immersed in needlework, lost in their favorite game, or reading by the warm glow of a lamp clamped to their windowsill.
Mai Khaled is Rowayat’s Editorial Assistant (Issue 10, Issue 12 and Issue 13)
Mai Khaled is a writer and editor based in Cairo. She earned a BA in English Literature from Cairo University in 2022. Before returning to academia to pursue an MA in experimental writing, she worked briefly as a photographer. Her non-academic writing can be found in her personal Substack newsletter, The Ibis Tongue. Mai’s writing explores various questions on language and identity among other things, through a phenomenological lens. Beyond the written word, she enjoys music, cinema, birdwatching, and tarot reading. She’s @jonnibis on Instagram
Alissar Izrafeel is Rowayat’s Issue 13 Nonfiction Editorial Assistant
Alissar Izrafeel. Holder of a BA and MA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut. I worked as a writer, researcher, editor, copywriter, and translator in Beirut. I will be working as an Editorial Assistant with Rowayat. I am happy to be part of this community.
Magd Elzahed is Rowayat’s Issue 13 Poetry Editorial Assistant
Magd Elzahed is a nursery teacher who journals to process her inner life, writing at the crossroads of grief, memory and beauty. She loves honey, quiet mornings, and the winter sun.
Ghada Emish is Rowayat’s Issue 13 Fiction Editorial Assistant
Ghada is an early-career writer based in Cairo, Egypt. She is interested in children’s literature and creative nonfiction. She works remotely as an archival assistant with NYU Abu Dhabi’s al-Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art. She loves spending her time doing hobbies like cooking, hiking in the Sinai, and bird-watching.