[Background image above depicts an Israeli strike on the Islamic University of Gaza on December 2, 2023, killing physics professor physics professor Sufyan Tayeh. Photo retrieved from the Andolu Agency.]

**UPDATE The link to take immediate action has been corrected at the bottom of this caption **

On September 18, 2025, the University of Minnesota’s Office of the Vice Provost and the Senate Faculty Consultative Committee will host PEN America to lead a symposium called A Campus for All: Campus Free Speech, Academic Freedom, and the Current Challenges to Higher Education. The decision to hold such a forum led by PEN America, which has a long track record of suppressing Palestinian voices and critiques of the state of Israel, is hypocritical. It disregards the coalitional pressure campaign led by Writers Against the War on Gaza to hold PEN American accountable for its actions, which include failing to meaningfully address Israel’s genocide on Gaza, normalizing Israel’s colonization of Palestine, suppressing Palestinian voices, promoting Islamophobia, and clamping down on the free speech of its own staff members. Thanks to the campaign, the organization has suffered damage recently, with its major Jean Stein award having to be canceled two years in a row because the nominated authors have withdrawn their books from consideration. The university’s invitation of PEN America while it bypasses the many qualified experts on free speech, academic freedom signals that the university is not actually interested in protecting free speech on campus.

Join the campaign to cancel this event, led by Educators for Justice in Palestine, of which Mizna is a member. The full email text is below. Please revise as you see fit.

** Follow this link to send an email to the Vice Provost, Senate Faculty Consultative Committee, the university’s president, and PEN America. If your browser does not support the Mailto app, send the message to the following addresses: abrah042@umn.edu, trj@umn.edu, phleo@umn.edu, mbodie@umn.edu, borrello@umn.edu, brown013@umn.edu, jenng@morris.umn.edu, hadi0001@umn.edu, rkrebs@umn.edu, kmetzger@r.umn.edu, pahwa007@umn.edu, redish@umn.edu, subree@umn.edu, vpfaa@umn.edu, provost@umn.edu, upres@umn.edu, info@pen.org, umnejp@gmail.com

The full email text is below. Please revise as you see fit.

Dear Office of the Vice Provost and Senate Faculty Consultative Committee (FCC):

Given PEN America’s well-known track record of reluctance to call out the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to fully support Palestinian writers and artists, I am surprised to see the FCC and Vice Provost’s office sponsor PEN to host an event on academic freedom and free expression. 

PEN currently has little to no credibility with many writers, precisely for its woefully insufficient response to the ongoing genocide and scholasticide Israel is committing in Gaza. Following PEN’s violent ejection of Palestinian-American writer Randa Jarrar from an event in 2024, thousands expressed criticism of PEN and demanded it take steps to stand for Palestinians. Numerous writers, including many affiliated with the University of Minnesota, have participated in what is a widespread and longstanding boycott, still ongoing, of PEN events, awards, and other opportunities. Nor is PEN considered an expert or standards body when it comes to the concept of academic freedom.

PEN America had no qualms condemning Russia’s assault on Ukraine, referring to the ongoing conflict there as “an assault on free expression and human rights, an effort to destroy Ukrainian culture, and poses an imminent threat to the country’s writers, artists, and journalists.” Its reluctance to forthrightly call out these same injustices executed on a genocidal scale in Gaza suggests the organization is tainted with structural racism and Islamophobia.

And yet, UMN welcomes PEN America with open arms, suggesting yet again that the administration echoes PEN’s callous indifference to the University community’s Palestinian, SWANA, and Muslim members and their allies.

It’s especially shocking that this event is organized as a University response to the improper unhiring of Raz Segal, a well-known expert in genocide studies. Violating the normal hiring process and faculty vetting in departments and colleges, the President’s Office barred Segal’s hire as Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies over political objections to Segal’s recognition that Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza is genocidal. His stance is not a minority or even, at this point, a controversial scholarly position—for example, it is shared by the International Association of Genocide Studies. 

It is concering that members of FCC and the Provost’s office, themselves academics, dismiss concerns raised by multiple scholars and scholarly associations about the politically-motivated unhiring of a genocide studies expert, and attempt to rectify a clear violation of academic freedom and shared governance by organizing an “academic freedom forum” led by an organization criticized by its own membership for silence on genocide.

I ask that you cancel this event and instead allow real conversations about academic freedom and the freedom to speak about Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The post Join the Call to Cancel PEN America at University of Minnesota appeared first on Mizna.

Mizna, a founding member of the Poetry Coalition, is accepting applications for a paid Poetry Coalition Fellowship position. This position is 20 hours per week from September 2, 2025 to June 30, 2026. The total stipend is $20,000 plus $1,100 toward healthcare. 

The Poetry Coalition is a national alliance of nearly thirty organizations dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds.

Mizna presents contemporary, critical, and experimental art, writing, and film centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For twenty-six years, Mizna has promoted experimental approaches to art, literature, and film; work that questions and expands the forms and conceptual frameworks of Arab and SWANA culture. We publish a biannual print literary and art journal, Mizna, and Mizna Online, a digital platform for literary and multidisciplinary work reflecting critically on the current realities of the SWANA region and beyond. We produce the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, the largest and longest-running SWANA-centered film festival in the Midwest. Mizna also offers readings, film series, performances, public art commissions, and community events that have featured 1000+ local and transnational writers, filmmakers, and artists.

POSITION OVERVIEW With this Poetry Coalition Fellowship, we seek a candidate who will work to increase the readership of Mizna: SWANA Literature + Art and Mizna Online by increasing and broadening the circulation and distribution of the print journal. The Fellow will strategize and implement grassroots distribution and visibility campaigns to expand national and international distribution, with a priority on independent bookstores. This role involves becoming familiar with Mizna’s current subscriber and distribution systems and helping to develop more streamlined approaches. The ideal candidate will have experience in creating and implementing a nonprofit business strategy, be current on the state of literary journals, and will be steeped in Arab/SWANA–American literature and culture.

FELLOW RESPONSIBILITIES 

• Committing to 20 hours per week for the entire ten-month fellowship
• Adhering to rules and policies of Mizna as appropriate 
• Assisting with any of the following:
  • Increasing readership
  • Distribution of the journal
  • Management and improvement of databases & inventory systems
  • Reviewing subscription models
  • Developing/maintaining bookstore and library relationships
  • Community outreach
  • Marketing and promotion
  • General administration
• Attending and participating in meetings, including ad-hoc meetings with other Poetry Coalition fellows and with leaders to foster community, professional development, and create a peer learning group
• Participating in the Poetry Coalition’s professional development sessions
• Completing evaluations at the end of the fellowship year

FELLOW QUALIFICATIONS 

• Passion for connecting literary journals with ideal readers
• Deep familiarity with the current landscape of Arab/SWANA–American literature
• Interest in nonprofit administration and management 
• Experience with database software and Airtable
• Excellent written skills in English
• Creative problem solving
• Big-picture, visionary thinking
• Collegial, kind, good humored, enthusiastic, collaborative
• Prioritization, multitasking, and project management
• Demonstrated experience in the areas listed above

NOTE: We welcome all applicants, including those who are enrolled in or have recently graduated from academic programs. 

TO APPLY: Please submit a brief (no more than one page) cover letter, resume, and two references to Ellina Kevorkian at ellina@mizna.org. Mizna is an equal opportunity employer committed to reflecting the diversity of the Twin Cities community in its staffing, programming, and partnership decisions. We strive to create a dynamic work environment that values inclusion and respect, entrepreneurism and innovation, community and service. 

The post FELLOWSHIP OPPORTUNITY appeared first on Mizna.

The 2025 AWP Conference & Bookfair takes place March 26–29, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Join Mizna for a long weekend of SWANA lit! At this year’s conference, Mizna will present an AWP Featured Event with Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and Mosaab Abu Toha, an AWP offsite event, and panels. Learn more about how to attend the AWP 2025 here.

Mizna + RAWI Booth

Catastrophe + Futurities: A Mizna AWP Offsite Event

Featured Event: Mizna Gathers Lena Khalaf Tuffaha & Mosab Abu Toha in Conversation

Mizna AWP Panel: Arab Time—Hybridizing Form, Language & Temporality

SWANA Panels

SWANA Caucus

Find Mizna + RAWI at Booth #355

Find Mizna journals and merch for the duration of AWP 2025 at booth #355. We’ll be sharing the booth with our friends at RAWI!

AWP SALE: Subscribe to Mizna and get a FREE back issue + a specially printed poem by Randa Jarrar from our forthcoming Futurities Issue!

Catastrophe + Futurities: A Mizna AWP Offsite Event

To kick off AWP 2025, join us in celebrating Mizna’s dual launch of the Catastrophe and forthcoming Futurities issues of our literary journal.

Featured readers include Randa Jarrar, Nancy Kricorian, Yahya Ashour, Sarah Aziza, Summer Farah, Gina Srmabekian, Umniya Najaer, Alia Taqieddine, and Pınar Banu Yaşar.

This event takes place on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 at 7pm at The River, 2929 Knox Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90039.

Doors will open at 6:30 and space is limited. We strongly encourage RSVPing, but walk-ins will be welcome if space is available.

TICKETS + MORE INFO

Featured Event: March 29, 2025 at 10:35am
Our People Shall Live: Mizna Gathers Lena Khalaf Tuffaha & Mosab Abu Toha in Conversation

As we mourn Gaza’s destruction by the recent campaign of Zionist genocide and watch a tenuous ceasefire evolve under an appalling new threat of American imperialism, we seek voices from Palestine to render, deconstruct, and reimagine these realities and our relationships to them. Toward that, Mizna is thrilled to host a critical conversation and reading with two major Palestinian poets: National Book Award winner Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and acclaimed Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha. The two will share work responding to the ongoing catastrophe and engage in dialogue about Palestinian sumud, literature’s role in resisting genocide, and our collective futures in and beyond the world of poetry.

This event will take place in person in the Los Angeles Convention Center and will be livestreamed for virtual audiences. All livestreamed events include open captions.

Location: Petree Hall C, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center

Mizna AWP Panel

Thursday, Mar 27, 2025 12:10pm PDT
Mizna Presents: Arab Time—Hybridizing Form, Language & Temporality

To write in relation to Arabic in the US is to confront problematic “East meets West” discourse through contrapuntal processes that unlock entire canons, forms, and genres. Intergenerational Mizna contributors from diverse backgrounds explore how hybrid language generates formal possibility that embraces orality and interrogates homogeneity. Panelists discuss how vast Arabophone traditions provide innovative techniques for attending to narrative structure, time, language, voice, and more.

Speaker(s): George Abraham, Sarah Aziza, Jameelah Lang

Location: Room 511AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

SWANA Panels at AWP 2025

March 27, 2025 at 9am PDT
The Velvet Air of Gaza: Protest & Beauty 

This multigenre reading by mostly Palestinian writers focuses on what it means to write in the face of genocide and the global student protests against it. How do our words transcend mere empathy and reach beyond it to achieve active solidarity? What is the relationship between beauty and protest? Between protest and language? How do these relationships inform love in the tradition of Black radical love? Our readings will illuminate some possible answers to these urgent questions of our time.

Speaker(s): Samah Fadil, Samina Najmi, Lena Mubsutina, Deema Shehabi

Location: Room 411, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 27, 2025 at 12:10pm PDT
Poetry in Translation: Satisfactions & Discontents 

This panel brings together writers/translators from Iranian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Armenian backgrounds, all living in the American diaspora, and writing in their native tongues and in English. As poets, novelists, and literary scholars, the panelists tackle a wide array of issues, including linguistic transgressions, gains and losses, dual identities, and politics of translation at times of calamity.

Speaker(s): Fatemeh Shams, Ahmad Almallah, Armen Davoudian, Huda Fakhreddine 

Location: Room 513, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 27, 2025 at 3:20pm PDT
Theories of Vastness: On Capaciousness in Poetry 

What does it mean for a poetic work to be “capacious”? This term implies an expansiveness of scope and experience—the possibility for the primordial and the vatic to converge, the promise of poem as sprawling event. This panel explores the mysteries of the capacious poem, while demystifying capaciousness from a craft perspective. It asks what craft tools can be brought to bear to enact cultural, linguistic, and spiritual vastness in poetic space.

Speaker(s): Issam Zineh , Kazim Ali, Brenda Hillman, Roger Reeves

Location: Concourse Hall 151, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 10:35am PDT
Sumud Motifs: Woven Inheritances in Arab Visual & Literary Storytelling 

Award-winning Arab, Black, and Indigenous creators are weaving literary and visual elements, rendering multicultural multimedia modalities grounded in sumud/steadfastness and decolonial resistance to oppression. Award-winning Womanist/Queer/Trans creatives will share cutting-edge storytelling structures through graphic novels, installation art, poetry based on Palestinian Tatreez, dance/movement, graphic art, multilingual printmaking, and text within painting/audio/video/visual poetics.

Speaker(s): Doris Bittar, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán,  Marguerite Dabaie,  Samah Fadil,  Micaela Kaibni Raen 

Location: Room 409AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 12:10pm
Beyond a Homeland: Celebrating Iranian American Women Writers 

How do writers make sense of the Iranian diasporic experience? This reading highlights Iranian American women fiction authors, all with incredibly varied connections to Iran. How do their relationships with a homeland that has been taken from them help shape the stories they tell? This is Iran beyond the news headlines. Discussion will follow the reading.

Speaker(s): Shideh Etaat, Jasmin Darznik, Sahar Delijani, Marjan Kamali, Porochista Khakpour 

Location: Room 405, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 1:45pm
We Are Still Here: A Reading for Palestinian & Armenian Solidarity 

IALA (International Armenian Literary Alliance) presents a reading of multigenre writers of Palestinian and Armenian descent. Their works in prose, poetry, and nonfiction examine culture and heritage in the diaspora despite ongoing campaigns of silencing by colonialist and fascist governments. In the face of exile and violence, our coalition fights for the recognition of our peoples’ safety and autonomy while celebrating writing as a continued form of resistance and survival.

Speaker(s): Gina Srmabekian,  Nancy Agabian, Mai Serhan, Raffi Wartanian, Priscilla Wathington 

Location: Room 501ABC, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 3:20pm
The Politics of Imagining: Poetry as Social Practice 

The political dimension penetrates every intimate aspect of human life—who is allowed to love whom and on what terms, who lives, who dies. Yet, “the political” is often relegated to a subgenre rather than being seen as the primary field of experience out of which the poetic imagination arises. This panel considers poetry within “a web of other social practices historically weighted with enormous imbalances of power” (Rich) and argues for a liberatory poetics that centers political consciousness.

Speaker(s): Issam Zineh, Courtney Faye Taylor, Cindy Juyoung Ok, Solmaz Sharif, George Abraham

Location: Room 406AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025 at 9am PDT
Behind the Acronym: Empowering Ethnic Voices – Launching a Literary Nonprofit 

What does it mean to be a literary nonprofit dedicated to a specific ethnic group? What are the benefits of highlighting diverse voices within a community that others see as defined by their cultural background? Hear from founders and arts administrators of the International Armenian Literary Alliance, Mizna, and the Radius of Arab American Writers on the importance of visibility, diversity, and practicalities in launching and maintaining a successful nonprofit.

Speaker(s): Arthur Kayzakian,  Shahe Mankerian,  Zeyn Joukhadar, Ellina Kevorkian

Location: Room 515A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025 at 1:45pm
Fighting the Muzzle: Literary Organizing for Palestine During Genocide 

The invasion and genocide of Gaza has cost the lives of almost forty thousand Palestinians. In the United States, even acknowledging this unconscionable atrocity has been labeled as “complicated.” The leaders of three prominent Arab/SWANA literary organizations (Mizna, RAWI, and Palestine Writes) discuss the ways they have been silenced trying to promote Palestinian, Arab, and Southwest Asian and North African literature, and the methods they’ve used to break through this silence.

Speaker(s): Glenn Shaheen, Susan Abulhawa, Lana Barkawi, Sarah Aziza,  Tarik Dobbs

Location: Room 408B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025 at 3:20pm
Innovations in Arab American Fiction 

A panel of groundbreaking Arab American fiction writers will read their work and discuss the trajectory of their artistic journeys. What is the responsibility of a writer to represent their culture in a society where their people are often maligned and misrepresented? How does the experience of Arab American writers working in fiction differ from other communities in this current cultural moment? 

Speaker(s): Zeyn Joukhadar,  Betty Shamieh, Ghassan Zeineddine, Sarah Cypher

Location: Concourse Hall 150 ABC, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025, at 5pm
SWANA Writers Caucus

This will be a town hall–style meeting, creating a much-needed space for SWANA writers to build and connect within AWP. We invite established and emerging writers, editors, students, scholars, and organizers, and aim for the caucus to facilitate networking and exchange on literary endeavors, craft, publishing, poetics, and praxis. Our caucus seeks to empower and center the voices of underrepresented Americans with roots in SWANA cultures and communities.

Speaker(s): Aliah Lavonne Tigh, Rabha Ashry, Tariq Luthun, Pinar Banu Yasar, Sophia Babai

Location: Room 501ABC, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

The post Mizna at AWP 2025 appeared first on Mizna.

English below

دعوةٌ لِلمشاركةِ فِي عددٍ مِن مجلَّةِ مزنة خاصٍّ بِغزَّة: إصدارٌ خاصٌّ مِن وإلى الكُتّابِ والكاتباتِ الغزِّيِّينَ/اتَ معَ المُحَرِّرِ الضَّيفِ يَحيى عاشور

قد انتهتْ فترة تسليم النصوص

في ظِلِّ هُدنةٍ غيْرِ وثيقةٍ بعدَ خمسةَ عشرَ شهراً مِن إبادةٍ جماعيَّةٍ وحصارٍ صهيونيٍّ على الفلسطينيّينَ/اتِ في غزَّة، تسعى مجلَّةُ مزنة في أمريكا، والتي تختصُّ بِأدبِ مَنْ لهم جذورٌ عربيَّة وجنوب غرب آسيويَّة، إلى تعزيزِ واحتضانِ أصواتٍ غزِّيَّة في إصدارٍ خاصّ. يُرحِّبُ المشروع، رِفقةَ المُحَرِّرِ الضيف، الشَّاعرِ الغزِّي يَحيى عاشور، بِمشاركاتٍ أدبيَّةٍ مِن كُتّابٍ وكاتباتٍ في غزَّة وكذلكَ كُتّابٍ وكاتباتٍ فلسطينيّينَ/اتٍ في الشَّتاتِ مِمَّن لهم جذورٌ غزِّيَّة 

محتوى المشاركاتِ مفتوح، سواءٌ أكانَ ذا صلةٍ بِالحصارِ والإبادةِ الجماعيَّةِ بِشكلٍ مباشرٍ أو غيرِ مباشرٍ، أو لمْ يكنْ له صلةٌ بذلكَ بِالمُطلق، فكُلُّ تجربةٍ تـ/يمرُّ بها الغزِّيّ/ة جديرةٌ بِالاهتمام

سيحصلُ الكُتّابُ والكاتباتُ على مكافأةٍ ماليّةٍ لا تقل عن ٢٠٠ دولار في حالِ تمَّ اختيارُ مُشاركاتِهمِ/هُنَّ

شروطُ التَّقديم

١. يجبُ ألّا يكونَ النصُّ الأدبيُّ منشوراً مُسبقاً بأيِّ شكل

٢. يمكنُ تقديمُ النَّصِّ الأدبيِّ بِاللُّغةِ العربيَّة أو الإنجليزيَّة

٣. كلُّ أجناسِ النُّصوصِ الأدبيَّةِ مقبولة

٤. يجبُ ألّا تتجاوزَ النُّصوصُ الأدبيَّة ٣ آلافِ كلمة؛ يُسمحُ بِتقديم ٣ قصائدَ كحدٍّ أقصى، أو نصٍّ أدبيِّ واحد

٥. يُرجى إرفاقُ نبذة مُختصرة عن الكاتبِ/ة مِن ٥٠ كلمة كحدٍّ أقصى، تتضمَّنُ المنطقةَ أو الحيّ الذي ترعرعَ/تْ فيهِ الكاتبُ/ ة أو أهله/ا في غزَّة، وعددِ مرَّاتِ النزوحِ. يمكنُ أيضاً إرفاقُ صورةٍ شخصيَّةٍ للكاتبِ/ة

٦. تُرسلُ النصوصُ الأدبيَّةُ إلى واحدةٍ من هاتينِ الوسيلتينِ وليسَ كِلتاهُما

عبرَ البريدِ الإلكترونيّ
gazafolio@mizna.org
أو، مِن بابِ التَّسهيلِ عبرَ رقمِ الواتساب: 0006 946 612 1

آخرُ موعدٍ لاستقبالِ المشاركاتِ هو ٣ آذار/مارس، ٢٠٢٥م، السَّاعةُ ١١:٥٩ مساءً بِتوقيتِ غزَّة

تعرَّف أكثر على يَحيى عاشور

تعرَّف أكثر على مجلَّةِ مزنة

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Mizna Gaza Folio: A special publication by and for Gazan writers guest-edited by Yahya Ashour

SUBMISSIONS ARE CURRENTLY CLOSED

At the juncture of a tenuous ceasefire after the fifteen-month-long Zionist genocide and siege of Palestinians in Gaza, the US-based Arab/SWANA literary journal Mizna seeks to amplify and embrace voices from Gaza with a special publication. Guest-edited by Gazan poet Yahya Ashour, the project welcomes submissions from writers in Gaza as well as Palestinian writers in diaspora who have roots in Gaza. 

The content is open—related to the siege and genocide directly or indirectly or not at all—every experience you have as a Gazan is relevant for consideration. 

Accepted writers will receive a minimum $200 USD honorarium.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

1. 1. Unpublished work
2. 2. English or Arabic only
3. 3. All literary forms accepted
4. 4. Under 3,000 words; maximum three poems, or one prose piece
5. 5. Fifty word author bio that includes where you originate from in Gaza. Optionally, you may include an author photo and how many times you have been forced to evacuate. 
6. 6. Submit writing to gazafolio@mizna.org, or, if needed, to Whatsapp number +1 612 946 0006.

DEADLINE: March 3, 2025, 11:59pm Gaza time

Learn more about Yahya Ashour

Learn more about Mizna

The post Call for Submissions | دعوةٌ لِلمشاركات appeared first on Mizna.

Mizna is pleased to announce our 2025 Pushcart Prize Nominations. The Pushcart Prize is an annual award and publication that honors the best poetry and prose published by small presses. Read the nominated pieces in our literary journal or on our digital literary platform, Mizna Online, today.

This Rubble is Mine by Noor Hindi, published in Mizna 25.1, Catastrophe

Gaza 2 Khartoum by Mohammed Zenia, published on Mizna Online

The Senses by Mona Kareem, featured in our forthcoming issue Mizna 25.2, Futurities

Flashbang by Leila Mansouri, published in Mizna 25.1, Catastrophe and Mizna Online

On Execution by Abdelrahman ElGendy, published on Mizna Online

Autobiography of Gaza by Diaa Wadi, published on Mizna Online

The post 2025 Pushcart Prize Nominations appeared first on Mizna.

PLEASE READ THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES CAREFULLY, UNSOLICITED SUBMISSIONS SENT TO OUR EMAIL AND SUBMISSIONS THAT DO NOT ADHERE TO THE GUIDELINES WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED.

SUBMISSIONS ARE CURRENTLY CLOSED

We are opening submissions for our unthemed Summer 2025 Issue, Mizna 26.1, December 6, 2024-January 6, 2025. We write this call as the ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza has passed its one year mark. In the midst of catastrophe and on the brink of new waves of fascism, we look towards cultural work— art, writing, music, film, and criticism— as the generative space in which our communities can come together in grief, rage, and solidarity as we redefine and upend our current world order. For this unthemed issue, we continue to encourage work that affirms the necessity of resistance and steadfastness against imposed structures of catastrophe; work that imagines new collectivities, new forms of struggle, new worlds. We welcome writing which centers Palestine, Armenia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Morocco, Libya, and beyond, places directly affected by the worst of recent imperial devastations. As solidarity with Palestine continues to be met with harsher forms of censorship, doxxing, cancellation of awards and events, expulsion from universities, and firing from professional positions, we also encourage writing from our anti-Zionist comrades as well as those who have been subjected to the aforementioned silencing. While we welcome submissions from former contributors seeking a space for their work in this urgent moment, we also especially encourage submissions from writers who have never been published by us before. 

Mizna has long been a home for literature with innovative, experimental forms, as well as visual art that is published with high quality print production practices. As such, we especially encourage ongoing submissions of visual poetry work, or hybrid works that cross the arbitrary boundaries of genre. In general, 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. 

Submitters do not need to be SWANA or Arab identified, but work submitted should be considerate of Mizna’s ethos and the social realities of our audiences, as well as aim to contribute to ongoing conversations in and beyond our communities. We encourage submitters to read back issues of Mizna before submitting work for consideration. 

There are no submission fees. Selected contributors receive a $200 honorarium, a 1-year subscription to Mizna, and 5 copies of the issue.

The post Call for Submissions: Mizna Summer Issue 26.1 appeared first on Mizna.

We are honored to publish Aurielle Marie’s “Now, for the Weather,” published as part of Mizna 25.1: Catastrophe Issue. Link to order here.

here: here: here: here: take what I have in exchange
(but what do I have?) just this:

—Aurielle Marie

Now, for the Weather

Before that she flips the hair over her shoulder
says they are storing the dead in ice cream trucks and 
every violence has been like this, an innocent image gutted 
A thousand pairs of feet, bloody 
beating a path in the dirt in the name
of a freedom they have never known 

For six months this year alone
I march my body in circles
in search of it, trying to create distance between
| the people I love| and |the men who built a killing field
in Weelaunee forest
martyred our sibling for opposing it
then blamed that death on the trees| 

while tortuguita’s body bloomed with 60 places for air
to escape
the State made quick work of mythmaking—first it was
only 14 shots then they wonder if it was just one errant
bullet
volleying between the wood as if an accident
finally, we just fired 57, only 57
The evening pundits speculate that maybe
Manuel Esteban Paez Terán shot all those guns at
themself, by themself

so when a so-called-news woman 
tells me (on behalf of Israel) that Hamas was under
the bridge so they burned the bridge or Hamas was
driving
the car so they must bullet the car
or cry there! Hamas there! underneath
the bed! where seven toddlers are sleeping before
leveling
the last standing hospital, I know I am again meeting a State at its splintering 

my sister, on the phone as we sit vigil, weeps 
when she realizes she has
been speaking to me in Arabic
her mouth beseeching god
in a language it can name its fears by 
I have not prayed since Ferguson. 
Tonight, I tell her, I must try 

every violence is like this, a wail escaping my mouth like a lost tongue
prayers segregated from the dialect that birthed it and each god I meet
allows horrors done in his name 

Maybe if it ever ended, the summers of
death cooling into autumns of disappearance, bodies piling like leaves. . . 

If there was ever any reprieve I wouldn’t be
            so angry,
                            so exhausted
                                                  so willing to become
                                                                       what my enemy says I am
                                                                                           so I might (finally) end him
                                                                                                             if that ending wouldn’t be
                                                                                                                                the start of another so-called war
                                                                                                                                with only one side

                                                                                           But that is a lone prayer unanswered

                                                 this world is what it is
                           And justice is a poem
           that has hung me too often
across where the line breaks

Inaction is
not my birthright,
is  not my job is 
not, even now, my choice 
But what to do with the impenetrable loss?? 
                               what to do about the damned weather, 
                               mundane and always having some little fit 
                               shifting to satisfy the tide or eat away at the land 
The seasons change lalalala 
And from behind the clouds, a fighter jet
Simple and regular, so the state tells me 

No. No. 
No. No. 
No. No. 
No. My god, my heart
                                  no. every violence wants me 
                                  to remove the humanity from my blood 
                                  so politicians and corporations 
                                  can devour me
& like the man driving an ambulance
full of the nearly-but-not-yet-martyred
through his ruined city on my phone’s blue screen,
I refuse to be consumed anymore than I might already have been

I don’t know what kind of human absolves themself to the end
of a world but habibi, I too count children and the seconds
between the dead falling from where they once were
to where they’ll never move from again 
and so how, on a night spilling saffron and sorrow
could I not sit vigil, useless though I may be 
against the mortar and phosphorus and soldiers—God 
what meaning are we to make of a world where the poem is only a container
for the despair that would consume me if I 
didn’t have a line to break or a pitiful lil
image to make meaning of, to give my hands something to fucking—

END IT ALL, GOD! 
end the whole damn twisted mess! but save the sliver of land between the river and the sea! I demand!
bring back the children and mothers and the uncles, the beloved queer librarian, GET TO IT! the doctor
who stayed when they told him to leave SEE TO IT! the people bleeding, waiting, not gone yet beneath
homes older than a fraud State. find the pregnant nail technician GET TO IT! the teenager who was, RIGHT NOW, in flight school AND MAKE IT SO
return them all I REQUIRE IT 
yes give back breath to even 
the men who did a hard thing in a desert 
in the name of possibility ESPECIALLY THEM! ESPECIALLY! 
GLORY TO THE WAY-MAKERS! 

here: here: here: here: take what I have in exchange 
(but what do I have?) just this: 

In 2014, one of us was slaughtered every 28 hours and I could have murdered every white pig with my rage from Gaza, from beneath another nakba, a girl my age shows me how to cool the tear gas from my eyes how pebbles
can disarm goliath, how to run sideways when they weaponize noise with their machines and—I survived.
she must have, too. she is alive, that girl. please?
she must be. if in my mouth. no—our mouth. let it be so. asé o.

Gaza you are not mine, but you are mine 
we, a minefield, beloved and belonging 
I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I 
I with you I with you I with you I with you, with you 
how dare I feel so alone this little room 
not in pieces my hands clasped together my 
one crooked tooth drawing blood from a chasm it has ushered unto my lip, and I apologize
that I am so whole otherwise, disabled by old wars in mundane ways, considering 

Beyond these empires
Beyond a storm’s swift chest 
there is another world (if only the poem could build it mo’ quicker, beloveds)
lemme use my hands lemme use my guns 
lemme use our body, our useless money 
Our sex our scum our spit, the fires we stoke

beyond these empires there is another world 
And
I am running—finally!—toward one 
in which we only know how cold the night 
is because we gathered in it 
our death absent 
our joy as ordinary, as the changing 
of breeze a young sun 
none of our aliveness coming to an end 
                                  this poem breathing on and 
                                  on and on until 
                                  you meet me 
                                  there 

Aurielle Marie is an acclaimed poet, essayist, and storyteller. The author of Gumbo Ya Ya (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) and winner of the 2021 Furious Flower Prize, the 2020 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and the 2022 Georgia Author of the Year, Marie lives in Atlanta, Georgia, on unceded Muskogee land.

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

We are proud to present this text as part of a list of resources to take action for and learn about Palestine, as well as works by Palestinian artists, writers, activists, and cultural workers.

The post Now, for the Weather appeared first on Mizna.

This poem is published as part of Mizna 25.1: Catastrophe Issue. Link to order here.

A year ago, Gazan poet Yahya Ashour left his home to come to the United States for the literary conference Palestine Writes. Yahya has been exiled in the US ever since, waiting for the genocidal war to come to an end. In the year since then, Yahya wonders what is there left to say but “Gazan Despair”?

Ashour is currently a fellow at Mizna, and we have published his debut book online, A Gaza of Siege & Genocide. Proceeds of book sales as well as the sale of other items go directly to supporting Ashour and his family who are trying to survive genocide in Gaza. Links below:

+ A Gaza of Siege & Genocide
+ Sumud letterpress print
+ From the River to the Sea letterpress print
+ It Matters letterpress print

—Nour Eldin H., assistant editor

Gazan Despair

Dear sky, 
where were you
when our homes were being
bombed?

Dear sea, where were you
when our bodies were being
charred?

Yahya Ashour | يحيى عاشور is an exiled Gazan poet and awarded author, born on April 22, 1998, based in the US. He is a Mizna fellow and an honorary fellow at the University of Iowa and the author of the ebook A Gaza of Siege & Genocide (Mizna, 2024). Ashour’s portfolio also includes poetry collections, children’s books in Arabic, and contributions to global anthologies and journals, including MQR and ArabLit. He has received multiple scholarships and fellowships and has read poetry at more than fifty U.S. organizations and universities, including Princeton, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and UCLA. His poetry has been translated into several languages, including Spanish, French, Japanese, and Bengali. Ashour studied sociology & psychology and he has worked as a creative writing mentor.

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

We are proud to present this text as part of a list of resources to take action for and learn about Palestine, as well as works by Palestinian artists, writers, activists, and cultural workers.

The post Gazan Despair appeared first on Mizna.

This poem is in honor of two young martyrs killed by Zionist forces while they fought for Palestinian liberation. Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi and Rachel Corrie both called Washington, lovingly nicknamed “The Evergreen State,” home. As we continue to demand the United States enforce an arms embargo on the Zionist entity, we must recognize Washington generates over $70 billion in business from the aerospace industry. For Washington comrades, state weapons and their resistance are homegrown.

In March 2003, twenty-three-year-old Rachel Corrie from Olympia, WA, was repeatedly run over by an Israeli soldier driving a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer. She was wearing a neon traffic vest and peacefully defending a Palestinian home in Gaza from being destroyed, and was crushed to death. Israel investigated itself, found itself inconvenienced but inculpable, and the Bush administration left the issue alone.

Over two decades later, twenty-six-year-old Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was shot in the head by Israeli forces while protesting the occupation in Nablus. Israel has already called her death an accident, despite an autopsy finding the cause of her death was a sniper shot to the forehead. She was volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the same organization Rachel Corrie was part of when she was killed. Eygi was one of the organizers of the Liberated Zone encampment for Palestine on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus, and graduated from UW in May 2024. Biden or Harris have yet to speak to Eygi’s family.

In their names & in the name of every martyr: we’ll see an end to state-sanctioned terror within our lifetime, from the river to the sea, from Turtle Island to Palestine.

—Raya Tuffaha

Ayşenur and Rachel

Ayşenur and Rachel lived 
separately. They were executed 

in foreign heat, with tools 
assembled at home. Today we paint 

their names on recycled cardboard,
march the same laps downtown— 

how evergreen.

Header image: Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi at her graduation from the University of Washington in 2024.

Raya Tuffaha is a Palestinian writer, fight director and actor from Seattle. Poetry collections: To All the Yellow Flowers (2020), apocalypse blues (2022). Words with Seattle Opera, Phoebe
Journal, Ms. Magazine, Button Poetry. Her BA is from Swarthmore College, and she has had additional training at the British American Drama
Academy. rayatuffaha.com. “Let it be a tale.”

Toward a Free Palestine: Resources to Learn About and Act for Palestine

We are proud to present this text as part of a list of resources to take action for and learn about Palestine, as well as works by Palestinian artists, writers, activists, and cultural workers.

The post Ayşenur and Rachel appeared first on Mizna.

Mizna is thrilled to announce that we have been awarded the Anan Ameri Lifetime Achievement Award from the Arab American National Musuem. This news comes as our organization marks twenty-five years of nurturing an unburdened space for artists, filmmakers, and writers to create and share their critical work with our communities.

The Anan Ameri Lifetime Achievement Award was established in 2022 to recognize exceptional body of work by an individual or organization and contributions towards advancing the field of Arab American writing and letters and spans the length of the awardee’s career.

The award will be celebrated at the annual Arab American Book Award ceremony November 9, 2024 at the AANM in Dearborn, Michigan.

The post Mizna Wins Arab American Book Award: Anan Ameri Lifetime Achievement Award appeared first on Mizna.