Matchbox by Usawa - Get lit. Monthly

We Are Here – Writings by Afghan Women

A special issue of Matchbox by Usawa curated by guest editor Shikha Sawhney Lamba.

Afghan women are creating, remembering, archiving, and dreaming in ways that defy the limitations imposed on them.
This special issue of Matchbox refuses both silence and sympathy, and opens space—for nuance, rage, tenderness, contradiction, and connection. What it doesn’t do is see Afghan women as metaphors, causes, or casualties.
In a time of war, exile, censorship, and systemic control, ‘We Are Here’ becomes an act of literary witnessing. Not remembrance. Not reconstruction. But radical, unapologetic presence.
Edited by poet and curator Shikha Sawhney Lamba, this issue gathers writings by Afghan women and gender-expansive creators—and about them, by those who hold them in memory, solidarity, and love. Contributions will span the literary and the personal, the poetic and the visual, the translated and the embodied.
This is an archive of their being.

For this special call, Usawa Literary Review invites contributions in genres of poetry, short fiction, reviews, interviews, essays, and creative non-fiction, based around the theme, We Are Here – Writings by Afghan Women.

There is no submission fee.
Deadline: August 10, 2025