In times of emergency and crisis, what must we do, and how must we endure?
Today, we’re sitting with “The family group chat in times of war” by Abu Leila, from our current issue Room 49.1 No Future For Who?.
Order Room 49.1 No Future For Who? now.
Abu Leila is a writer interested in love, violence and revolution. They work across fiction, poetry & non-fiction, on page and on the stage.
Their pamphlet ‘The family group chat in times of war’ is upcoming in January 2027 with fourteen poems.
Their work, preserving family histories of anti-colonial resistance, was shortlisted for the 2024 Wasafiri new writing prize and won the 2024 Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Prize. Their writing on sex and gender today and in the Ancient Middle East won the 2022 Bridport Prize and the London Writers Awards. Their story about a really angry woman won a bronze 2025 Creative Futures Award. They are an a Barbican Young Poet, and their poetry has been published in the Bad Betty Press anthology “Field Notes on Survival”, recreated as a stone carving at the Bloomsbury Festival and performed in Kolkata, India with the Queer Muslim Project. They are currently working on their first novel. Abu Leila hopes to see the fall of imperialism and capitalism in their lifetime.
ROOM 49.3 NO CANADA
In the new era of CanCon, as feminists and writers it is our task to reject this Canadian exceptionalism, this too-comfortable back-patting. How can we begin to imagine alternative arts economies, Indigenous economies around art, that start with treaty, that align with BDS? What art, what literature, would such a system free us to create?
Seeking members who love literature, events, merchandise, and supporting marginalized creators.
No Canada | 49.3
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Science | 49.2
Price range: $19.00 through $29.00
No Future For Who? | 49.1
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
REST/UNREST | 48.3
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Travellers | 48.2
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Wits End | 48.1
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Full Circle | 47.4
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Bodies | 47.3
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Seedpod | 47.2
Price range: $12.00 through $25.00
Utopia | 47.1
Price range: $12.00 through $25.00
