“Around the Table” will be edited by Michelle Ha, alongside assistant editors Isabella Wang and Asna Shaikh, and shadow Shristi Uprety. The team will be looking for fiction and nonfiction prose, poetry, black-and-white art and photographs, and mixed-genre/hybrid writings, so submit in whichever form you feel tells your story the best.
Amidst all the swirling anxieties of the pandemic, I had almost forgotten I was brown. I had forgotten that the eyes looking out from above my mask were deep inky pools which so often failed to reflect familiarity and belonging.I had forgotten that, while my hands were gloved and hidden, my sepia arms betrayed my origins in a sun-washed and sun-dried land.
I am anchored through the idea of “open” to guide my process as I’m looking at submissions. How does language require opening? How do we give up all assumptions? How do we dig out definitions?