At this time when we are witnessing ruthless generational destruction. Rowayat affirms that the sanctity of life means safeguarding the right to community and continuity.
To resist erasure, to build strong literary futures, let us reflect on our most enduring influences of the past.
To build a thriving literary ecosystem, writers need time and space to think about what sustains their own writing, let us take time to name and appreciate the writers whose work has helped to form our own thinking, and to talk about any work we are most drawn to and excited about now.
Let us acknowledge and share our most nourishing sources of literary sustenance and inspiration: the poets whose voices we carry in our heads, the prose writers whose legacies we most urgently feel our work to be in conversation with.
To name the voices of poets we carry in our heads in the present, writers who have moved and inspired us in the past, whose legacy we strive to build on in future.
For CONNECT & SUSTAIN, we ask contributors to consider the following questions:
– Name an author writing in any language, from any era, who has influenced your own formation as a writer? Whose work has helped to form your thinking? Whose work are you most drawn to and excited about?
– What poets or authors do you credit for a sense of lineage or literary roots – i.e. the ideas, topics, styles, literary moods, collective movements, that have nourished your own writing, given you a sense of connection to the past, or a sharper focus for your literary aspirations in the future?
– Discuss any work of fiction or poetry by any writer, past or present, and describe the ways it has surprised you, moved you, given you courage, changed your thinking?
– Name an emerging/contemporary writer whose current work (in any language) you are following and to whom you feel more readers should pay attention?
Writers may submit poems or prose responding directly to any one or more of these questions, or writing inspired by this issue’s CONNECT & SUSTAIN theme as a whole.
To submit: https://rowayat.submittable.com/submit
Our Guest Editors for Issue #8
Rahat Kurd is Rowayat’s Managing Editor, rahat@rowayat.org
Rahat Kurd is a writer and poet based in Vancouver. Her most recent publication, The City That Is Leaving Forever (Talonbooks 2021), is a hybrid of correspondence and poetry exchanged between Vancouver and Kashmir over a five year period with poet Sumayya Syed.
Kurd’s first collection of poems, Cosmophilia, was published by Talonbooks in 2015. Kurd draws on multilingual poetics and is especially interested in the ghazal tradition in Urdu and Persian literature. With writer and poet Meredith Quartermain, Kurd co-curated and co-hosted The Rhizomatic, a monthly online poetry series featuring a single guest in a deep-dive format, from September 2020 until June 2021.
Kurd was the guest editor of the 2019 Summer Supplement issue of The Puritan online literary magazine, publishing poetry and fiction around the theme, “What does it mean to be a Muslim writer?” Commissioned by composer Brian Current , Kurd’s libretto “Light Upon Light” was performed as part of an oratorio, The River of Light, at the Vancouver Opera Festival in May 2019.
Fatima ElKalay is Rowayat’s Poetry Editor, fatima@rowayat.org
She holds an M. Litt in Creative Writing from Central Queensland University. Her work has been shortlisted for the London Independent Story Prize and the ArabLit Story Prize for short fiction in translation. Her first collaborative collection, Dessert for Three combines fiction and memoir, and was published by Rowayat in 2022.
Tesleem Fadairo is Rowayat’s Assistant Poetry Editor, tesleem@rowayat.org
Fadairo Tesleem (TPC vi) is a Nigerian poet & translator, and a member of The Poetic Collective. Tesleem is also the author of the Gazelle, Sacrament Of Prayers. He was on the shortlist for 2022’s Spectrum Poetry Contest, Abubakar Gimba’s Prize for Nonfiction (2023) & Africa Teen Writers’ Award (poetry category). His poems are published in The B’K Magazine, Geez Magazine, Dillydoun Review, Protean Poetry, Consequence Forum, Efiko Mag & host of other publications. Tesleem has received supports & grants from the Horror Writers Association and Boston Writers of Colors & he currently serves as he assistant poetry editor for Rowayat & as a poetry reader for Consequence Forum. Tesleem is an alumnus of the Olongo Poetry workshop & SpriNG Writing Fellowship. He tweets @olakunle
Tariq Malik is Rowayat’s Fiction Editor, tariq@rowayat.org
Pakistan born, Vancouver-based desi-POC author/mentor Tāriq Malik, has worked across poetry, fiction, and art for the past four decades to distill immersive and compelling and original narratives.
He is the author of a short stories collection Rainsongs of Kotli, and a novel Chanting Denied Shores. His poetry collections include Exit Wounds, 2022, Blood of Stone, 2024, by Caitlin Press, and three unpublished chapbooks.
His writing has appeared in The Puritan, TWUC’s Write Magazine, The Aleph Review, and Verbal Art July (2019), among others.
Hannah Alkadi is Rowayat’s Editorial Assistant, hannah@rowayat.org
Hannah Alkadi rights the wrongs in our world by writing about them—in essays, poetry, and short stories. She believes that ādāb (literature) is how we learn adab (etiquettes), and works to yield a pen as mightily as a sword against the ire-breathing dragons of prejudice. By knighting minorities as heroes and questing for unseen settings, she castles the oft-repeated tales into ones that not only represent, but resonate. Her work has been featured in Amaliah, Muslim Youth Musings, Traversing Tradition, and MuslimMatters.
Ibrahim Fawzy is Rowayat’s Editorial Assistant, ibrahim@rowayat.org
He is an Egyptian literary translator and academic who holds an MA in Comparative Literature. He was awarded a mentorship with the National Center for Writing, UK (2022/2023). His translations, reviews, interviews and articles have appeared or are forthcoming in ArabLit Quarterly, Words Without Borders, The Markaz Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal and elsewhere. He also podcasts at New Books Network. His debut book Belonging to Prison will be published by Cambridge Scholars this summer.
Sara Imam is Rowayat’s Social Media and Children’s Lit Assistant
Sara Imam is an Egyptian storyteller with a focus on education, development and celebrating diversity through stories. Blending ancient lore with contemporary nuances. In 2019 imam attended an intensive oral storytelling workshop in Amsterdam that ended with her first solo performance. Under the tutelage of storyteller Chirine Al-Ansary since 2020, Sara has honed her craft, captivating audiences of both children and adults alike. She is a member of Irtigalia Honn, an improv theater troupe founded by Ramsi Lehner, she is also an actress at sitara theater for children and a trainer at Aspire Community Training and Consulting company.
Mohsen Mohamed is Rowayat’s Arabic Literature Editor, mohsen@rowayat.org
Mohsen Mohamed is an Egyptian poet born in 1994. His poetry collection entitled, مفيش رقم بيرد (No One Is On the Line), was published in 2020 by Dar El Meraya for Cultural Production. It won first prize for vernacular poetry at the Cairo International Book Fair as well as the Sawiris Cultural Award. In 2014, in the aftermath of a student demonstration (in which he did not participate), while coming to the aid of a young woman, Mohamed was caught up in a sweep of arrests on his campus. His life as a poet began during the five years he spent in prisons.
- Rowayat Interns for Issue 8:
- Adamu Yahuza Abdullahi
- Keila Gallardo Cubas
- Abdulrazaq Salihu
