Submissions

Theme: En/tanglements

“... the opposite of dispossession is not possession, it is deep, reciprocal, consensual attachment …We relate to land through connection—generative, ­ affirmative, complex, overlapping, and nonlinear relationship.” 

— Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance (2017)

We open with this teaching from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson to think through entanglement as a condition of relation, care, and accountability. In Simpson’s words, attachment, when reciprocal and consensual, becomes an act of resistance to colonial logics of separation and extraction. To be entangled then, is to live in connection: with land and water, with language and ancestry, with the human and more-than-human relations that shape our being.  For this issue of At the Margins, we invite creative, scholarly, and artistic submissions that dwell in these relational spaces. How do we sustain attachment rather than possession? What forms of art, writing, and thought emerge when we take seriously the web of connections that sustain us? How do we live through entanglement as both beauty and tension—as care, survival, and co-resistance? In a time of ecocidal and genocidal violence, how might we care for each other, ourselves, and the world? What acts of allyship and solidarity are desperately needed against the backdrop of climate change, mass deportations, and other crises? 

We welcome work that reimagines what it means to live, create, and learn in relation. We invite you to join us in tracing the threads of our shared entanglements.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:   

• Relational Worlds

• Decolonial Ecologies

• Memory and Inheritance

• Language and Voice

• Bodies and Boundaries

• Creative Resistance

• Care and Reciprocity 

• Entangled Temporalities

• Networks and Technologies

• Learning in Relation 

• Pedagogical Interventions 

• Allyship and Solidarity

We are looking for pieces that are in the following form: 

• Creative Interventions (maximum four pages) 

  • Artwork (a drawing, painting, or photograph, for example) 

  • Poetry 

  • Short Story 

• Essays (1,000 to 1,500 words maximum) 

Co-authored pieces are welcome, but please note that this journal is open only to currently enrolled students at York University, specifically Indigenous, Black, Brown, and/or Asian graduate students. We also request submissions of works that have not been published elsewhere or that do not require ethics approval. 

Drafts can be submitted to atthemarginscollective@gmail.com attached as a Word doc with the email header as “Draft Submission for At the Margins.” Before sending us a draft, please use and submit your work using this template.

Please also make note of the following deadlines:

• Draft: November 15, 2025 to November 30, 2025

• Revisions from Editors: December 15, 2025

• Final Drafts: January 15, 2026

• Publication: January 30, 2026

Please feel free to contact us with any questions and thoughts. We are excited to work with you!