Al-Rafidi: A Queer and Trans Shia Muslim Anthology Vol. 1
Queer & Trans Shia Muslim Network
Queer Shia Collective
Call for Submissions
The Queer Shia Collective is gathering submissions for Al-Rafidi: A Queer and Trans Shia Muslim Anthology Vol. 1, a community-based digital anthology centering the voices, lived experiences, intellectual contributions, and creative work of 2SLGBTQIA+ Shia Muslims across the globe.
We welcome prose, poetry, essays, personal narratives, theological reflections, critical analysis, fragments, letters, and hybrid forms.
This anthology is created by and for Queer and Trans Shia Muslims. It seeks to preserve our histories, amplify our voices, foster community, and contribute to ongoing conversations on faith, identity, justice, and liberation.
Your piece does not need to explain queerness or Shiism to an outside audience. It does not need to be polished, respectable, resolved, or easy to categorize. We welcome writing that is devotional, messy, questioning, intimate, political, quiet, experimental, scholarly, poetic, or unfinished.
Al-Rafidi is a community-rooted digital anthology centering the diverse voices and lived experiences of 2SLGBTQIA+ Shia Muslims from across cultural backgrounds, traditions, and schools of thought.
It is a collective space for storytelling, reflection, scholarship, poetry, creative expression, theological inquiry, and critical analysis. It is meant to hold work that often has nowhere safe to go: writing shaped by faith, grief, gender, sexuality, migration, family, ritual, memory, loss, survival, and forms of belonging that do not fit neatly into dominant Muslim, queer, or literary spaces.
This publication is part of an ongoing anthology series dedicated to documenting and celebrating Queer and Trans Shia Muslim life.
About the Anthology
Project Details
Posted: July 2026
Submission deadline: November 2026
Expected publication: June 2027
Submission method: Email and official Queer Shia Collective website portal
Website portal availability: August 2026
Format: Digital anthology
Cost to submit: Free
Cost to access anthology: Free
Submissions that are not featured in Volume I may be considered for the Queer Shia Archive, a separate digital archive space on the Queer Shia Collective website.
Who Can Submit
This call is for queer and trans Shia Muslim writers, artists, community members, seekers, scholars, poets, and people writing from within or near queer Shia experience.
You do not need to be a professional writer. You do not need to have published before. You do not need to use academic or literary language.
We welcome submissions from people who are:
queer, trans, non-binary, gender-diverse, questioning, Two-Spirit, intersex, asexual, aromantic, bisexual, lesbian, gay, pansexual, or otherwise connected to 2SLGBTQIA+ experience
Shia, culturally Shia, raised Shia, returning to Shia practice, questioning, or in complicated relationship with Shia identity
writing from diaspora, homeland, exile, migration, conversion, family memory, spiritual searching, or community experience
connected to a range of Shia traditions, cultures, languages, histories, and schools of thought
We will not ask you to prove your identity, faith, queerness, grief, or belonging.
What We Accept
We welcome:
poetry
prose
personal essays
memoir-style reflections
theological reflections
critical analysis
letters
prayers and du’as
fragments
experimental writing
hybrid forms
short fiction
visual/text-based work
writing in English, Arabic, Persian/Farsi, Urdu, Spanish, or other languages connected to your experience
Suggested themes may include:
Muharram, Karbala, grief, mourning, ritual, or majalis
queerness, gender, body, desire, love, or chosen family
Shia memory, devotion, doubt, prayer, or religious inheritance
family, silence, secrecy, shame, tenderness, or rupture
migration, exile, diaspora, homeland, return, or displacement
survival, loss, disability, illness, care, or community
justice, liberation, refusal, resistance, or spiritual imagination
scholarship, theology, history, or critical reflection
speculative futures, ancestral memory, and worlds beyond the present
These themes are suggestions, not limits.
Your safety matters.
You may submit under your real name, chosen name, pen name, or anonymously. We will not publish your legal name, contact information, location, or identifying details without your consent.
You may also tell us if there are details in your piece that should be removed, blurred, changed, or handled carefully before publication.
Please only share what you feel ready to share. You do not need to disclose anything that would put you at risk with family, community, employers, institutions, governments, or anyone else.
If your piece is accepted, we will confirm how you want your name to appear before publication.
Safety + Privacy Note
Submission Guidelines
Please submit one piece.
Suggested lengths:
Poetry: 1 poem
Prose, essay, personal narrative, theological reflection, or critical analysis: up to 2,500 words
Short fragments or hybrid work: flexible
Visual/text-based work: submit as a PDF or image file if formatting matters
We accept both polished and in-progress work, but please send the version you feel comfortable having reviewed.
Submissions will be accepted by email and through the official Queer Shia Collective website portal. The submission portal will be available in August 2026.
Accepted file types may include DOCX, PDF, TXT, JPG, or PNG.
Light edits may be suggested for clarity, grammar, formatting, or length. Larger edits will not be made without your approval.
Submissions are open until November 2026.
If you need more time, please contact us before the deadline. We may be able to offer flexibility depending on the project timeline.
Deadline
Frequently Asked Questions
Still have questions? Take a look at the FAQ or reach out anytime. If you’re feeling ready, go ahead and apply.
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No. This anthology welcomes writers, artists, scholars, community members, and people who may not think of themselves as writers at all.
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Yes. You may publish under your real name, chosen name, pen name, or anonymously.
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No. You do not have to be out publicly, privately, spiritually, or politically. You decide what name and details, if any, can be shared.
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No. Your work does not need to explain, prove, or directly name anything. It should connect in some way to the lived experience of being queer and Shia, but that connection can be subtle, personal, spiritual, cultural, emotional, political, or indirect.
It can be about grief, family, ritual, desire, memory, faith, doubt, language, silence, survival, scholarship, theology, imagination, or anything else connected to your life and experience.
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Yes. We welcome multilingual submissions. If translation becomes needed for publication, we will discuss that with you.
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Yes, as long as you still hold the rights to the piece or have permission to republish it. Please tell us where it was previously published.
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Possibly. We may suggest light edits for clarity, grammar, formatting, or length. We will not make major changes without your approval.
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We may not be able to publish every submission in Volume I. This depends on the number of submissions, editorial fit, safety considerations, and project capacity.
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No. Submissions are completely free.
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Yes. Volume I will be available digitally for free through the Queer Shia Collective website.
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Contributor honoraria are not confirmed at this stage. If funding becomes available, accepted contributors will be updated before publication.
We believe contributors should be compensated for their work and will be transparent about what is possible as the project develops.
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Submissions that are not featured in the anthology may be considered for the Queer Shia Archive, a separate digital archive space on the Queer Shia Collective website.
We will not move your work into the archive without your consent.
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We will review submissions after the deadline. If your piece is shortlisted or accepted, we will contact you about edits, archive consent, payment if applicable, and next steps.
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Yes. You can withdraw your submission by contacting us through our email. Please include the name or pen name used in your submission and the title of the piece.
Submit
Submissions are open through the official portal.