From August 1st- August 31st 2025
Rowayat is proud to announce the inaugural Poetry Contest, accepting submissions in August 2025. Rowayat, a literary journal launched in 2012, has long been committed to showcasing voices that resist the global climate of injustice. As a platform for creative writing in all its forms, Rowayat believes in building community through storytelling to counter the growing dominance of corpocracy, militarization, and repression. The contest invites poets to contribute their voices to this movement of resistance.
The winning poems will be published in Rowayat’s Issue 13 (Fall 2025), awarded a $500 cash prize, and offered a 1:1 mentorship session with the contest judge, Sara Elkamel.
Submission Guidelines
- Open to all poets who have not published a book-length collection of poetry.
- Each poet may submit 1 to 3 poems, not exceeding 5 pages in total.
- Poetry in translation is welcome. Please provide the original poem(s) with the translation.
- Submit poems as a single document in PDF or Word format.
- Submissions must be previously unpublished.
- Simultaneous submissions are allowed. If your work is accepted elsewhere, you must inform Rowayat immediately by sending a message on Submittable.
- Submission Period: August 1, 2025 – August 31, 2025
- Entry Fee: $10 USD [Free Entry for Palestinian Writers]
About the Judge
Sara Elkamel is a poet, journalist, and translator based in Cairo. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University.. A Pushcart Prize winner, Elkamel has also been awarded Southeast Review’s 2023 Gearhart Poetry Prize, the Michigan Quarterly Review’s 2022 Goldstein Poetry Prize, Tinderbox Poetry Journal’s 2022 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, and Redivider’s 2021 Blurred Genre Contest. She is the author of the chapbook Field of No Justice (African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books, 2021). Her translations include Mona Kareem’s chapbook, I Will Not Fold These Maps (Poetry Translation Centre, 2023) and Dalia Taha’s collection of poetry, Enter World (Graywolf Press, 2026).
Elkamel is especially drawn to poems in fragments, to lyric poetry that is unafraid of narrative, to surreal motifs, and to poetry in translation. But her taste is eclectic, and she’s eager to be surprised!
We’re thrilled to present the exceptional poets and poems selected by judge Sara Elkamel from hundreds of powerful submissions.
📝 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, translated by Alice S. Yousef —
Untitled (“Oh, the way breath arranges itself when fire breaks out”)
A heartfelt thank you to all who submitted — the winner will be announced Oct31st.
