OPEN CALL: EXOPHONY

We are now accepting submissions for our 10th issue, themed Exophony.

Exophony is commonly described as the practice of writing in a language other than your mother tongue. When we write in a language that we were not nurtured within, what do we say? What can we put into words, that we cannot in another language? Can we be more honest? More courageous? Or are we hiding? Obscuring ourselves more deeply? 

If you write in multiple languages, how does your voice change from one to another and another and another? What languages do you have? What languages do you lack? Is language something we can ever possess? Does a mother tongue even exist? 

Cultural imperialism, migration, war, family, و our personal choices may inform our linguistic realities. This open call invites writers who creatively express themselves in a language that they or others may not consider to be their “mother tongue.” Simultaneously, this open call invites you to investigate the boundaries of language, perhaps even contending that a mother tongue does not exist in the first place.

El 9ara7a the bounds of this open call are murky… because language is murky. 

Here’s what we can say for certain: we’re interested in work that obscures and subverts language. We encourage multilingual work, work that breaks syntactical rules, that is erroneous of 7arakat/diacritics/grammar/punctuation. You can submit work that reflects on your relationship to language, but you can also submit work that demonstrates your language(s) in its/their idiosyncratic form. We invite you to be creative, genre-b(l)ending, and imperfect in your submissions. 

We encourage submissions in ALL languages—Arabic, English, Tagalog, regional or adopted dialects, computer languages, private languages, invented languages, code-switching languages, “broken” languages, and beyond. We also hope you’ll interpret the theme openly and curiously.

Logistical Information:

• Deadline: 15th of February 2025, 11:59 PM UAE time.

• Eligibility: We accept work from women in/from the Middle East and North Africa.

• Final Form: Pieces published on Unootha’s website.

• Genre: We accept all text-based, visual, and hybrid submissions. There are no genre limitations.

• Site of Submission: Submit through this form.

WORK BANK

If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at contact@unootha.com.