Call for Submissions

Dear poemeleon readers:

Another journal I help to edit is actively seeking work for its next issue, due out in November. Please read the call for submissions (below) and if you have anything suitable please send it to babel (at) icorn (dot) org.

Cati Porter

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Call for Submissions: Deadline October 25, 2007

babel aims to provide its readers with excellent writing by established and emerging authors.

Please note that the Voices section prioritizes work accompanied by translations. We also seek poetry and fiction related to the overall themes babel addresses.

For On Citizenship and Across Culture we welcome essays, fiction and poetry dealing with issues of identity, and on cross-cultural approaches to reading and/or writing literature.

For In Dialogue we are looking for interviews, correspondence between writers, and creative writing that speaks to classic poems.

We request that you email your submission as an attachment, .doc or .txt. Don't forget to write you name on each numbered page, and please include a brief and relevant cover letter & bio in the body of your email. Please write "submission" in the subject line and mail to babel (at) icorn (dot) org .

For tips on how to make free audio files, email ren (at) icorn (dot) org .

We are a not-for-profit organization and regret that we do not have funds to pay our contributors at this time. We hope that you will consider the right to include your work in babel as a donation to an important cause.

About babel:

ICORN's quarterly webzine babel is an extension of the network's efforts to help provide persecuted writers the freedom and opportunity to have their voices heard along with those of the best emerging and established writers working uncensored.

Perhaps Mansur Rajih's story is not typical of ICORN Guest Writers, but it does illustrate the ironic situation many of our Guest Writers face: censored, but significant in their homeland; uncensored, yet isolated abroad.

During the 15 years of his incarceration, Mansur Rajih's friends were able to smuggle his poetry out of the Yemeni prison. In this way, his work was published in the region for over a decade, his poetic voice was heard despite prison and a death sentence. However, once he had been released from prison - once he was able to write and live safely, to sleep "soundly throughout the night" (as former ICORN Guest Writer Carlos Sherman described his ICORN experience) - Rajih found himself living in a part of the world where very few people could speak or read his language, where very few people were qualified to translate his native tongue. While not impossible, publication was difficult. And his readership was geographically remote.

It is no surprise that exiled writers face unique challenges in reaching their intended audiences. This webzine is a small - but we hope significant- effort to spotlight the work and the interests of these writers.