Room Magazine

Room Magazine’s Annual Cover Art Contest 2016 is now open!

All contest submissions will be judged by Jillian Tamaki (co-creator of This One Summer and Skim, and whose works have been recognized by the Ignatz Award, Eisner Award, and Governor General's Award), and Hangama Amiri (who received the honourable mention as part of the 2015 RBC Canadian Painting Competition and is a Fullbright Grant winner). 

First prize winner will receive $500 and publication on the cover of 40.2.  Second prize winner will receive $50 and publication in the same issue. All winners will be published with an artist statement and interviewed for Room magazine’s blog. Winners will have the option to submit additional artwork for the issue, which, if selected for publication, will be compensated for at our usual rates. 

Submitted artwork must not have appeared on the cover of another publication, but works that have been published on your own website, on the interior pages of a book or magazine, and/or have been exhibited are eligible!  Room Magazine is Canada's oldest literary journal by and about women. Published quarterly by the West Coast Feminist Literary Magazine Society, also known as the Growing Room Collective. Room showcases art, fiction, poetry, reviews, creative non-fiction, and interviews by writers who identify as women, including trans, two-spirited, and genderqueer people.

50 Books Written by 50 Canadian Women of Colour

More often than not, when Roomies gather, we talk about books. Books we can't put down, books we couldn't put up with, and books that make us talk. For this reading list, eleven of us got together and discussed novels, short story collections, poetry, memoirs, and comics that we have read and loved which happen to be written by Canadian Women of Colour. A few of these are well-known classics, a few are upcoming releases. There are stories set locally and abroad, and also include one in dystopian Toronto. Writing from the Women of Colour perspective is not a genre, but instead a multitude of voices, stories, and experiences coming together. And even though we are honoured to feature a handful of these writers are in our upcoming anthology, we know that this is just a starting point, and by no means a comprehensive list of books written by Canadian WOCs. At Room, we recognize that there is work to do, and we are already working on a part two.

Read our conversation with Doretta Lau, our fiction contest judge, about her writing process, her shorty story collection, How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun, and her advice to emerging writers.

We sure pay our contributors!

Upcoming deadlines:

July 15: Poetry and Fiction Contest as judged by Marilyn Dumont and Doretta Lau

$1000 for the first prize winner of each category

Submission fee comes with free one-year subscription to the literary magazine

https://roommagazine.com/contests

July 31: Food-related poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and visual art

Call-out for our upcoming Room issue 40.1 Food. 

No submission fee. All contributors will be paid.

https://roommagazine.com/submit

Room Magazine is committed to publishing emerging writers and artists of diverse backgrounds. Room publishes original work by women, including trans* persons, gender-variant and two-spirit women, and women of non-binary sexual orientations.

Some cooking inspiration for the long weekend!

The Room Magazine editorial board (of varying culinary prowess) got together and wrote about some of their favourite food writing, including memoirs, essays, compendiums, and cookbooks.

Read our selection here: https://roommagazine.com/tags/cookbooks

Kirton: In your piece, Leather and Naughahyde, you further explore identity politics between the Métis and their First Nations relations. I really had to chuckle as I assumed naughahyde was a Cree word, so I looked it up and was surprised to find that it actually meant “artificial leather”. This was such a clever way to address the tensions between our people. I cannot tell you how many times I have introduced myself as just Métis, as if my “diluted blood” was something to apologize for. What this and your other books do so well is highlight the reality of the no-win-situation that the Métis often find themselves in. Few realize just how much the Métis have also been impacted by colonization, which is compounded by the exclusion that we have experienced in both worlds. Many have utilized political action and activism to bring forward our unique needs. I hold my hands up to them for the sacrifices they have made. My way has been poetry, as I find it to be a powerful and subversive tool for activism. I prefer a much quieter existence and the less public life of a poet. Has writing been your mode of activism? What have the costs and the rewards of this path been?

Dumont: Writing has saved my emotional, spiritual, and intellectual life in a country where I wasn’t supposed to exist, let alone thrive. It allows me to sort out the mess of structural inequity, bureaucratic obfuscation, colonial racism, and sexism. It allows a space for my voice and sense of self.

Kirton: As Aboriginal writers, there seems to be an expectation that we represent our community. Many see you as one who speaks for the Métis community, how comfortable are you with this role?

Dumont: I reflect on the difference between representation and responsibility. I believe I have a responsibility to my relations and my community, but I don’t represent them because how can I represent such diversity?  

Read the rest of Jónína Kirton’s interview with Marilyn Dumont here: https://roommagazine.com/interview/interview-marilyn-dumont

Marilyn Dumont's A Really Good Brown Girl won the 1997 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. This collection is now a Brick Books Classic and in French translation from Les editions Hannenorak Press. Her second collection, green girl dreams Mountains, won the 2001 Stephan G. Stephansson Award from the Writer’s Guild of Alberta. Her third collection, that tongued belonging, won the 2007 McNally Robinson Aboriginal Poetry and Aboriginal Book of the Year. The Pemmican Eaters was published by ECW Press, 2015. Marilyn has been the Writer-in-Residence at the Edmonton Public Library, the Universities of Alberta, Brandon, Grant MacEwan, Toronto-Massey College, and Windsor.  She has been faculty at the Banff Centre - Writing with Style and Wired Writing and advised and mentored in the Aboriginal Emerging Writers’ Program.

Call for Submissions

Writers and artists, share with Room your work that tell stories related to food—cooking, farming, hunger, consumption, digestion, eating, and not eating. Editors Kayi Wong and Rose Morris are looking for poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and art that explores food in all its glory and complexity for Room issue 40.1, which will also feature work by Marilyn Dumont. 

Deadline to submit is July 31. No submission fee required. All contributors will be paid.

Room issue 39.2 featuring our first ever cover art contest winning artwork—“Blood Moon” by Tiffany Mallery

Our annual cover art contest will open again in September. Entries will be judged by Jillian Tamaki and Hangama Amiri. Top two entries will receive $500, and $250.

“This issue of Room works as a tantalizing play of light and shadow on the rich gamut of female experience. It features writers, artists and poets whose dark subjects—death, domestic abuse, suicide, drug crime—are illuminated by fine observation, well-told stories, images in sharp relief, and polished writing.”

“We have been taught systems where accolades and certain praises coming from a particular space is worth more than my black sister saying to me that your work is profound to me and every day it shifts my soul. I have had to teach myself how to value that over everything else. I had to learn that because that’s not what I was taught. The value of my black sister’s body, and the value of her mind and the value of her spirit, is valueless. So then, if she has an opinion or an idea, where is it going to be placed? So a part of re-centring myself, re-centring the multiple communities I’m a part of, is, retraining and reconfiguring this, this success system and understanding that we are deeply successful because we insist on being present.”

—d’bi young anitafrika on performance, centring oneself, and storytelling in Room Magazine 39.1

Interview can also found online here: https://roommagazine.com/interview/d%E2%80%99bi-young-anitafrika-performance-centring-oneself-and-storytelling

Literary Magazine’s Call for Visual Art Submissions for Annual Cover Art Contest!

Room Magazine’s is now accepting all forms of visual art for our first annual cover art contest! Judged by Amy Friend, and Ilene Sova, contest closes on November 30th, 2015.

1st Prize: $500 + publication on the cover of Room issue 39.2 (along with an artist statement)

2nd Prize: $50 + publication in Room issue 39.2 (along with an artist statement)

Published quarterly by the West Coast Feminist Literary Magazine Society, also known as the Growing Room Collective, Room showcases fiction, poetry, reviews, art work, interviews and profiles by writers and artists, who identify as woman and/or trans*

One cover art contest entry includes up to three images and corresponding artist statement(s)

Submission fee includes a one-year subscription to the publication

All winners will be published with an artist statement and profiled on Room magazine’s blog. Winners will have the option to submit additional artwork for the issue, which, if selected for publication, will be compensated for at our usual rates.

Room Editor’s Favourite Comics Written by Women

"One of the things that is really popular right now is multiple perspectives in literature where you have a lot of stories that are shifting back and forth, and I think part of that is this desire to get into more than one person’s point of view. Comics allow you to really subtly do those different perspectives without necessarily telling you explicitly what anyone is thinking, just what they’re saying or what they’re doing, which is incredibly valuable I think in storytelling."

Literary Journal Seeking Visual Art for Annual Cover Art Contest!

Room Magazine's is now accepting all forms of visual art for our first annual cover art contest! Judged by Amy Friend, and Ilene Sova, contest closes on November 30th, 2015.

1st Prize: $500 + publication on the cover of Room issue 39.2 (along with an artist statement)

2nd Prize: $50 + publication in Room issue 39.2 (along with an artist statement)

Published quarterly by the West Coast Feminist Literary Magazine Society, also known as the Growing Room Collective, Room showcases fiction, poetry, reviews, art work, interviews and profiles by writers and artists, who identify as woman and/or trans*

One cover art contest entry includes up to three images and corresponding artist statement(s)

Submission fee includes a one-year subscription to the publication

All winners will be published with an artist statement and profiled on Room magazine’s blog. Winners will have the option to submit additional artwork for the issue, which, if selected for publication, will be compensated for at our usual rates.

Literary Journal Seeks Visual Art for Annual Cover Art Contest!

Room Magazine's is now accepting all forms of visual art for our first annual cover art contest! Judged by Amy Friend, and Ilene Sova, contest closes on November 30th, 2015.

1st Prize: $500 + publication on the cover of Room issue 39.2 (along with an artist statement)

2nd Prize: $50 + publication in Room issue 39.2 (along with an artist statement)

Published quarterly by the West Coast Feminist Literary Magazine Society, also known as the Growing Room Collective, Room showcases fiction, poetry, reviews, art work, interviews and profiles by writers and artists, who identify as woman and/or trans*

One cover art contest entry includes up to three images and corresponding artist statement(s)

Submission fee includes a one-year subscription to the publication

All winners will be published with an artist statement and profiled on Room magazine’s blog. Winners will have the option to submit additional artwork for the issue, which, if selected for publication, will be compensated for at our usual rates.