Positive Spaces: Call for Submissions

Kinaara magazine in collaboration with Open Space India seeks contributions to Positive Spaces, an anthology of fiction, articles, essays, photographs and artwork that emphasise and celebrate the aspects of unity and coexistence within the youth of South Asia and the diaspora.

About Positive Spaces

Positive Spaces is a campaign run by Open Space India in a number of Indian cities in 2009, with the aim to develop physical as well as symbolical spaces that are safe, diverse, inclusive and attentive to the ways in which hierarchies of class, caste, religion, sexuality, gender and ability work within the youth. The campaign has been carried out in campuses and public spaces through workshops, awareness sessions, theatre and other live performances and film screenings, and supported by organisations like Seagull Foundation for the Arts.

Launched in July 2009, Kinaara is a monthly online literary magazine for the youth in South Asia and the diaspora. Kinaara is a platform to facilitate experimentations in the literary and art forms, discussions on social issues and concerns and similar communication arising from all over South Asia and people who identify as South Asian.

The collaboration will result in a print anthology to be published in January 2010 and circulated to NGOs, universities, libraries and social studies organizations across South Asia and beyond.

Submission Details

• Contributors should be of or below the age of 30 years as on December 31, 2009.
  
  
• Contributions should pertain to the topics of contemporary South Asian life, society, arts, culture or youth, and emphasise the theme of positive spaces.
  
  
• Essays, articles and short fiction should be within the length of 800-1200 words.
  
  
• Poetry should be within the length of 80 lines.
  
  
• Photo features should contain a maximum of 10 photos. Original files are preferred.
  
  
• Art features should contain a maximum of 5 pieces, scanned at 300 dpi in the least.
  
  
• For mixed media work and/or work requiring specific formatting, the contributor is requested to get in touch with the Kinaara team.
  
  
• Contributors should agree to permit Kinaara to publish any submission unused for the print edition in subsequent online editions.

All submissions and queries should be directed to submit@kinaaramagazine.org.The last date for acceptance of submissions is November 30, 2009.

Editor circulation and other things

As our readers might have noticed, the selection for the September edition of Kinaara is Anomitra's. Rohit has decided to take over the October selection - with the theme Celebration - so look forward to that! If anyone's missing my editorship (hehe, how presumptuous), I'll be back in November.

Editor circulation we think is a fantastic idea. Each of us has very different tastes and opinions, so that in one way ensures that all kinds of material get the fair chance to be published. It also ensures a fair distribution of work pressure, since all of us are full-time students and do a great many other things (and don't get paid for Kinaara, remember). Rohit had been busy all through July and August. Anomitra is going on vacation at the end of this month, and I have more work right now than I've ever had before, which will continue till the end of November, I'm afraid. So it's a great thing for us that Rohit is back and taking charge of next month's edition. We all are working in bits and pieces, of course -- there's a lot of checking, proofreading, writing back to contributors etc. to be done which is never possible for just one person -- but this brings a great deal of relief.

Expect a newsletter in about a week's time, with what I'm right now calling the big news (and keeping my fingers very tightly crossed about). If you've never received a newsletter before and aren't sure if your email address is on the list, feel free to send us a shout at newsletter@kinaaramagazine.org.

Monidipa Mondal

A warm welcome to all the readers and supporters of Kinaara. Kinaara has grown from stregth to strength thanks to your love and support. We are pleased to announce that our September edition is out and can be accessed on our Website.

The submission due date for our October edition is 15 September and with Durga Puja, Diwali and Eid celebrations around the corner we decided the theme for this month will be Celebration.

The November issue is unthemed and submissions are solicited by 15 October.

I would also like to take this opportunity to tell our supporters that Kinaara is expanding from being just an online Magazine. We are currently in talks with Open Space, Pune and GYCA (Global youth coalition on aids) on future collaborations.
Watch this space for more.

Rohit K dasgupta
Assistant Editor

(On behalf of the Kinaara team)

Media updates yo!

It took us a while to collect all the links and photos, but here goes the long-awaited post. Firstly, photos from the launch of Kinaara on July 1.

Anomitra and yours truly at the Seagull Bookstore, just before people started coming in. We're just pretending that we're not nervous. Photo credits to Bedatri.

The panel discussion in progress. From left to right, Dr. Rimi B. Chatterjee, Dr. Kavita Panjabi, Mr. Oishik Sircar and Mr. Pratim D. Gupta. Photo credits to Pujarini Sen.

Part of the audience (the one with us in it; yes, we're narcissistic like that). You can see Anomitra, my head (but not the rest of me), Bedatri and Rohit, among others. Photo creds again to Pujarini.

The launch was reported on the city edition of the Hindustan Times and on The Telegraph in Schools, neither of which, interestingly, have a web edition; so there is no link.

However, there is this (rather ludicrous, I must say) coverage of Kinaara on the Indian Express. No, we're not a south-east Asian magazine really, and no, my surname isn't spelt like that, but I did say ludicrous, right? Rather more factually correct is the coverage in this week's Tehelka, which should be on your newsstands by today morning (at least if you're in India) and stay there for another week, so if you're interested in souveniers for the future you know where to look!

On a rather more serious note, the August edition of Kinaara has just been put up on our website. Go take a look, and tell us if you like what you see.

Monidipa Mondal

Barely survived!

Last night there was a spam attack on the Kinaara website. It might have started a while back, for who can post about 120 spam comments in one night's time? (Or maybe they can, you never know spambots!) It gave me quite a heart attack though, tech-retard as I am, because the website of the last online magazine I was part of had got attacked by a strange virus a few months back and never recovered. (I wasn't part of the team by then, so I didn't get to learn what exactly had happened, but I doubt if it would've made any difference to my tech-retard brain.)

So I panicked and nearly died.

Anyway, by now Chirag and I seem to have cleared up the problem, so all is well and I'm going to sleep peacefully at night. The October theme is Celebration, by the way. The deadline for that is September 15, as you guys must've got accustomed to. But before that is September, unthemed, and let's see the submissions!

August Issue: Conflict

This is an official call (and ill-disguised plea) to all readers and Kinaara supporters and enthusiasts to submit their thoughts on the subject in prose and verse to kinaaramail@gmail.com by the 15th of July. While physical and political forms are the more obvious forms of conflict, we're sure we shall some innovative takes on the topic as well. Don't disappoint us!

On behalf of the editorial team, which can hardly wait,

Rimi

25th June, 2009.

Media Coverage

Hindustan Times has agreed to send in a correspondent to cover the launch and TARA Bangla has also shown interest in reporting the event either through TARA Bangla or TV South East Asia.

Bedatri D.Choudhury
25.6.2009.

The Third Panelist

Pratim D. Gupta has agreed to sit in the panel for the launch on July 1st. He is an eminent film journalist in Calcutta and has conducted quite a few quizzes in the city.

He added as a post script that he'll make it to the launch unless something drastic happens - something like the death of Mr. Bachchan.

Here's wishing many more years to Mr. Bachchan :)

Bedatri D. Choudhury

Meeting 4

Date: 15. 06. 2009

Location: The office of the Dean of Arts and later Bonami (Monida's Canteen), Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

Time: 1 pm - 2 pm

Attended: Monidipa Mondal, Rohit K. Dasgupta, Anomitra Biswas.

Happenings:

We have our meetings at the unlikeliest places, though Monida's Canteen over a plate of dubious chicken fried rice I think is favourite.

This was a good-news meeting. Things announced at this meeting are:

- We have got permission to use the Seagull Bookstore for our magazine launch on July 1.

- We are having a panel discussion at the launch. The discussion topic is 'Representing the Global South Asian.'

- We have also got confirmations from two panelists to speak at the discussion: Samantak Das and Kavita Panjabi, both professors of the Comparative Literature department of Jadavpur University.

Things we discussed at this meeting are:

- contents of the July edition, this being the day of the deadline,

- submissions we have received so far for the August edition,

- the launch programme in further details - exact time, calculation of costs, where to get laptop, internet, projector, screen, furniture etc. from,

- who to invite as the other speaker(s) for the panel discussion.

Monidipa Mondal

Meeting the third

Date: 29. 05. 2009
Location: Cafe Coffee Day, Golpark, Kolkata
Time: 6 pm - 7:45 pm


Attended: Monidipa Mondal, Rohit K. Dasgupta, Anomitra Biswas, Priyanka Nandy, Bedatri Datta Choudhury, Diviani Chaudhuri

Happenings:

First meeting since all the out-of-station tentative board members came to town. A rather more formal meeting, this, than the last two (if by formal you mean not at someone's house or a college canteen, and we do).


i) Priyanka, Diviani and Bedatri were updated on whatever had happened,

ii) new things discussed:
- inclusion of Ramanuj Mukherjee in governing body,
- policies of the magazine,
- initial calculations of money required to set up the magazine,
- discussions on how the money is to raised,
- discussions on possible donations, collaborations, advertisements etc.,
- how long our out-of-town members {bedatri, diviani and rimi (priyanka)} are staying in kolkata,

iii) discussions were continued about:
- the registration of the magazine,
- the possible collaboration with Open Space and what can transpire,
- the planning of the magazine launch,
- invitees for the panel discussion at the launch and the topic of discussion.

Anomitra Biswas

Meeting 2

Date: 27. 05. 2009

Location: Bonami (Monida's Canteen), Jadavpur University, Kolkata

Time: 1:30 pm - 3 pm

Attended: Monidipa Mondal, Rohit K. Dasgupta, (Anomitra Biswas).

Happenings:

Rohit having come back to Kolkata (he wasn't in town during the first meeting), the three of us met up at Monida's canteen at JU after Anomitra and I had written an extra-departmental examination in Sanskrit.

i) Rohit was updated on the discussions from Meeting 1.

ii) We talked about:

- the inclusion of Omair Anwar in the Editorial Board,

- details of website-building,

- a possible collaboration with Open Space (Pune),

- beginning to plan a physical launch programme for Kinaara,

- more discussion on the date, location, costs, kind of programme, people to be invited for the above,

- interactions happening at the Facebook group for Kinaara,

- submissions we have already received,

- the next meeting that would include the other tentative board members of Kinaara.

Monidipa Mondal

Meeting the first, slightly truncated.

Date: 23.05.2009.
Location: Anomitra's place, Kolkata.

Attended: Anomitra Biswas; Monidipa Mondal.

Discussed:

• Progress with art.
• Progress with website.
• Magazine launch. ( date, location, events)

Anomitra Biswas

First public appearance

The Kinaara project was made public yesterday (May 20, 2009) at a number of online platforms. The Facebook group was created, and along with it the existence of this blog and the email address (kinaaramail@gmail.com) were announced. Notices were also put up on a number of journals and relevant communities on LiveJournal and Dreamwidth. The people who wrote and put up these notices are Anomitra Biswas (Rhea Silvia/Rhea) and me (Monidipa Mondal/Mandy). Has anyone else written, forwarded links/emails and/or invited friends? Would you like a mention in this space? Please let us know. 

The logo we are currently using for all purposes is a tentative iteration created by Karno Guhathakurta. He may want to make minor changes to it before the final website goes up, or we'll use the current model. Opinions and suggestions on the logo are welcome. 

The last time I checked the Facebook group - a few minutes back - we had exactly 100 members. 100 members in a little less than two days! That's very, very encouraging for everyone who's working behind the scenes at Kinaara, and I hope it makes us remember the responsibility to not disappoint so many people when we finally deliver. Thank you for all your support and belief in us!

Submissions have started coming in, which is another very good sign. I suppose I'm not allowed to talk about what we've got till now, or how many. Trade secret sorta thing. You'll have to wait till the magazine launches to find out about that little intrigue.

That's all for now, then.

Monidipa Mondal

We have a name.

This is joy. And this is also the proverbial ball set into motion. Very slowly, but nevertheless. :)