@rowayat
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.
Join us for a conversation and book signing celebrating
"The Book of Z," a poetic re-voicing of Zulaykha.
🗓 Wed, Feb 11 · 7 PM
📍 Diwan Zamalek
🗣 In conversation with Fatima ElKalay
Hosted by the Rowayat Editorial Family ✨
#Poetry #Rowayat
WHEN KINGDOMS FALL, CONSCIENCES RISE
A conversation on history, faith & moral compromise in Then He Sent Prophets
🗣 Mohamed Seif El Nasr × Sherine Elbanhawy
📍 Diwan Cinema Radio
🗓 Feb 4 · 7 PM
Presented by
@RowayatEgypt
&
@DiwanBookstore
#SAWNALiterature #HistoricalFiction
During dark times, we search for fragments of connection—
Week 3 of Forged Kinship is here.
Read this week’s 18 contributors who illuminate the paths between us:
poetry, nonfiction, fiction & art
shaped by grief, memory, rupture, and survival.
rowayat.org/tag/issue-13/
#Rowayat #Issue13
Thank you for having me as one of the 4 great poetry editors.✍️📝
Week Two of Rowayat Issue 13: Forged Kinship is now live.
This week’s pieces moved us to tears—war, grief, Gaza, home, language, translation, and the fragile threads that bind us when everything else is breaking.
🔗 rowayat.org/category/new/
pages, where kinship is shaped word by word.
Issue 13: Forged Kinship has begun.
17 new pieces—poetry, fiction, nonfiction & art—including Rowayat's 2025 Poetry Contest Winner & the full shortlist.
New pieces will drop every week until just before Christmas.
Read and stay 4 the kinship we are forging line by line.
rowayat.org/tag/issue-13/
🚨 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
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 🎉
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
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.
Look at me, mom!
🚨 Announcing Rowayat’s 2025 Poetry Contest!
Submit your unpublished poems (1–3, max 5 pages) between Aug. 1st–31st rowayat.submittable.com/submit
🚨 Announcing Rowayat’s 2025 Poetry Contest!
Submit your unpublished poems (1–3, max 5 pages) between Aug. 1st–31st rowayat.submittable.com/submit
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
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
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/
New poems @rowayat.bsky.social in their Echoes Issue 12 rowayat.org/poem-for-my-...
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.
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...
Palestinian Prison Memoir Becomes Unlikely Topic at 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair - by Olivia Snaije for @arablit.bsky.social
arablit.org/2023/10/23/p...
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
Die Here, to Live There: Two Poems by Kamal Elgizouli arablit.org/2023/11/07/d... via @arablit.bsky.social
"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...
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.
Six books by Rabih Alameddine
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!"
Warm gray square with featured image for Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature by REFQA ABU-REMAILEH
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