As Mizna’s twenty-fifth anniversary approaches, we are opening submissions for our Summer 2024 Issue, Mizna 25.1. Although this issue will be unthemed, the editorial team wishes to center and uplift our community in a time of rage and mourning, especially those Palestinian, Armenian, Afghan, Sudanese, Moroccan, and Libyan folks who are living through various forms of colonial, imperial, genocidal, and ecological catastrophe. We highly encourage submissions from those most affected by these disastrous situations. Furthermore, in a moment where solidarity with Palestine has been met with censorship, doxxing, cancellation of awards and events, and firing from professional positions, we continue to welcome writing from our anti-Zionist comrades as well as those who have been victims of 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 from artists doing 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 aesthetic and the social realities of our audiences, as well as be a contribution to ongoing conversations in and beyond our communities. We encourage submitters to read back issues of Mizna before submitting work for consideration.

Simultaneous submissions are accepted, though we ask to be notified as soon as possible if the submission is accepted elsewhere. There are no submission fees. Selected contributors receive a $200 honorarium, a 1-year subscription to Mizna, and 5 copies of the issue.

Submissions Guidelines

Please include a short cover letter (200 words or less) as the first page of your submission, with a brief overview of the work you’re submitting and why you are submitting to Mizna.

Poets should list out the poems they are submitting, and let us know if there are simultaneous submissions elsewhere.

Prose submissions should include a brief 1-2 sentence overview of the submission (e.g. a synopsis if it is a story or narrative essay, or an overview of the argument for more expository essays; keep in mind that we are a literary magazine).

Include a brief (50 words or less) author bio.

Add a maximum of one sentence for any additional information you would like the editorial team to know about the work.

Please submit as .doc or .docx files preferably, or pdfs for pieces with complex layouts. We do not accept other file formats (e.g. pages). Prose submissions should be double spaced and limited to 5000 words. Please do not send us your term papers or thesis manuscripts for consideration. Poetry submissions should be limited to four poems of any length, verses exceeding our page width will be treated with a runover indent.

Please only submit once per submission period. We are open to submissions from November 15 through December 15. All submissions that do not adhere to our guidelines will be discarded unread. 

NOTE: If you are unable to submit your work in the form below, please try refreshing the page in your browser and trying again, or disabling any ad blockers you may have installed. If you continue to have trouble after taking these steps, send us an email at mizna@mizna.org.