CFP: Nighthawk Star: World Philosophy Literary Magazine

Nighthawk Star: World Philosophies Literary Magazine

Nighthawk Star is a bi-annual literary magazine that publishes on World Philosophies and Literatures. We seek to give voice to writing and art that engage with philosophical issues from perspectives otherwise marginalised by Anglo-European and Western-style academia; and are committed to uplifting philosophy from around the world and embracing non-traditional forms of expression. For us, ‘World Philosophies’ represent the diverse intellectual traditions rendered homeless by well-established academic institutions and philosophies that keenly attend to the lived experience of the individual embedded in their historical, social, cultural, and political contexts. Our mission is to support philosophically-minded writers, thinkers, and artists who experience marginalisation due to their backgrounds and/or views. We hope to do so by building a platform for sincere literary engagement.

Call for Works: Mālā (Beads)

Submissions for our second issue are now open under the theme 'Mālā' (Beads).

In Sanskrit, mālā (माला) means “garland”, though it has evolved to mean a loop of prayer beads in Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. The Chinese call them “Buddha beads” (佛珠) and the Japanese, “counting beads” (数珠). It is the misbaḥa (مِسْبَحَة) in Islam and the rosary in Christianity. All over the world, people have developed the same tradition of appealing to the divine through symbolic, disciplined repetition. Even where beads do not serve religious purposes, the sense of their passing through our fingertips becomes a solace for many. What kinds of beads do you carry? Why are they of a certain shape, colour, and number? Beads are often made from materials local to a people: consider wood, stone, gems, and seeds, as well as the thread that holds them together. Besides physical beads, our lives also are full of metaphorical “beads”: consider the notions of repetition and circularity (saṃsāra), counting, tactility and embodiment, attention, ritual, and religious identification.

Which aspects of your life seem to repeat themselves while grounding you in the present?

We are accepting all genres of writing, including fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and philosophical essays; we are also accepting works of art, including scans or photographs of physical mediums, digitally created art, as well as photography. We welcome broad interpretations of this theme in prose under 2,000 words (fiction, creative nonfiction, philosophical essay), poetry under 40 lines, and visual art including photography. You may submit up to 2pcs of written work and 3pcs of art each round. As we are not an academic journal but a literary magazine, we love to see works that are daringly creative both in subject and style.

Deadline for submissions is 1st September, 2026.

You can find more information about making a submission with us on our website linked below. To make a submission, please use the submissions form on the website: