Palestine Solidarity Special Issue: SUBMISSIONS CLOSED

SUBMISSIONS CLOSED

FIYAH Literary Magazine is excited to announce our open period for Palestinian Speculative Fiction writers. We’re reaching out to Palestinians based in Palestine or across the diaspora to share their speculative work with us in either Poetry or Short Story format. We’ll be featuring this work on our website beginning in November 2021 as well as providing an ebook including works by Palestinian illustrators, the proceeds of which will benefit Medical Aid for Palestinians. 

This is an Unthemed Issue, meaning that the theme of the submitted work is NOT required to center, include, or be related to Palestine or geopolitical issues. We are interested in the full breadth of imagination and storytelling by Palestinian SFF writers.

Nadia Shammas and Summer Farah will be co-guest editing for the issue. 

Nadia Shammas is a Palestinian-American writer from Brooklyn, NY. She’s best known for being the writer and co-creator of SQUIRE, a Middle Eastern fantasy graphic novel to be released by HarperCollins in February 2022. She is also the writer and co-creator of WHERE BLACK STARS RISE, an adult eldritch horror graphic novel to be released in August 2022 with Tor Nightfire. Her work often focuses on memory, identity, and challenging Orientalism in genre. When not writing, she attempts to win the love of her cats, Dash and Lilith. 

Summer Farah is a Palestinian American poet and editor. She is the outreach coordinator for the Radius of Arab American writers. Summer is currently a reviewer at Vagabond City Lit and co-writes the biweekly newsletter Letters to Summer. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Mizna, LitHub, The Rumpus, and other places.

The special period is open September 1st 12:OOAM ET (GMT-4) through S̶e̶p̶t̶e̶m̶b̶e̶r̶ ̶3̶0̶t̶h̶ October 15 11:59PM ET. You will find the link to the submission form at the bottom of these guidelines. Here is what we’re looking for:

• All submissions must be speculative regardless of medium.
• Prose submissions must be between 500 and 7,000 words, with a preference for shorter stories which allows us to feature more work.
• Poetry submissions may be of any length.
• Submissions are open to Palestinians in Palestine and throughout the Diaspora. 
• We will accept a simultaneous submission, so long as we are notified if they are accepted elsewhere.
• No reprints or fan fiction.
• Limit one (1) story or four (4) poems may be submitted by any one author.
• We accept submissions in English and Arabic.

Short stories will be paid at a rate of 8¢ per word. Poetry will be paid a flat rate of $100. 

The Team at FIYAH stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine in their ongoing struggle for freedom and self-determination against the perpetually escalating violence of colonialism.

Through this special issue we hope to highlight the future of Palestinian SFF. 

Palestinians, Black people and Indigenous communities in and outside of the US have a long history of solidarity and mutual respect. We hope this special issue will serve as a tangible example of our respect, appreciation and interconnection.

Palestine: We see you, we value you, and we share our opportunities with you just as you share our struggles.

We encourage people who are unfamiliar with the Palestinian fight to educate themselves by following—but not requiring labor of—Palestinian voices on social media, or by visiting decolonizepalestine.com for a thorough introduction. We also highly recommend checking out the special Palestine Issue from our friends at Strange Horizons and support the contributors to it.