🎈 Submissions are now open until 15 December! 🎈 Works in translation are always extremely welcome. 🎈 Works in any language spoken in Pakistan are extremely welcome. 🎈 Please follow the guidelines at the link in our bio, which is this lakeermag.com/submissions. It answers all your questions, promise.
🎈 Celebrate Hera Naguib's stellar debut poetry collection 'Rupture Anthem' with Lakeer! 🗓️ 24 October, Saturday 🕰️ 12 noon US EST // 9pm Pakistan 📍 Online 🎫 Tickets are free. Reserve your spot: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/new-voices...
Omair Danish spoke with Ali Baluch, a Baloch lens-based artist from Malir, Karachi. They talked about the impact of the Malir Expressway on the Malir River, sandmining, and how development projects have affected the lives of people and animals in the area. lakeermag.com/death-and-fl...
📣 Submissions will be opening shortly for Lakeer Magazine! Get your short stories, essays, poetry, translations, art, and photography ready. 📣 15 October – 15 December. 📣 Details will be on our website. 📣 We are so glad to share we will be paying our contributors for our Spring 2027 issue.
In his essay "Ghuttan: A Sociocultural Illness," Muhammad Khuzaima Nizami talks about ghuttan as a malady brought on by the way cities are built. He compares the capitalist-centric structures and lives there to the more nature-centric ones in Cholistan. In Issue Eight lakeermag.com/khuzaima-niz...
Malaika Rai's powerful poem گِدھ simmers with rage, published in Issue Eight. Read the full poem here: lakeermag.com/malaika-rai-...
We are thrilled to introduce our brilliant lineup of speakers for the upcoming event on September 20th! Get tickets for “Voices Across Borders: Who Gets Represented?” here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/voices-acr...
Read 'God Story' by Irta Usman, about Awais Bhai who lives in a Lahore divided into the North and the South, and his love for the city. This story appears in Issue Eight – The Climate & Hunger Issue. lakeermag.com/irta-usman-g...
Hammad Rind, writer, translator, and the translation editor at Lakeer, talks about the upcoming event "Voices Across Borders: Who Gets Represented?". Here, he speaks about the continued importance of working with South Asian languages. * Tickets: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/voices-acr...
In September, National Translation Month, join Lakeer in its virtual event "Voices Across Borders: Who Gets Represented?" about translating from underrepresented South Asian languages. 🗓️Sunday, September 20 ⏲️6 PM PKT (9 AM EST) 📌Online Tickets: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/voices-acr...
We're thrilled that Lakeer is the proud recipient of a 2026 PEN Translates x SALT Grant. Lakeer has published over 60 translations, in Urdu, Punjabi, Gujrati, Welsh, Tamil and Sinhala. With support from PEN Translates x SALT Chicago, we're set to hold our first event next month!
🎉 THE LATEST ISSUE OF LAKEER MAGAZINE IS HERE! ISSUE EIGHT, SUMMER 2026 SPECIAL - THE CLIMATE & HUNGER ISSUE! In it is a landscape of related, overlapping concerns: human-made climate catastrophes; questions about injustice and pushbacks on violence. Read here: lakeermag.com/issue-eight
Sarah Ahmad's art, 'Landscapes of Imagining, II', appears in Issue Seven. Sarah lives and works between Tulsa, Oklahoma and Lahore, Pakistan. At the core of her work is transformation...and renewal, just as the earth continually seeks to heal itself. www.sarahahmad.com
'Solitudes' by Raja'a Khalid is a short story about two sisters, different in temperament to each other. Circumstances take them far from home, where, away from the usual distractions, each sister discovers something about herself. Read the full story in Issue Seven: lakeermag.com/rajaa-khalid...
Poetic Renditions' Column 3, by Amama Bashir, features Jaun Elia's poem ہمیشہ قتل ہو جاتا ہوں میں 'Hamesha Qatal Hojata Huun Mein', translated by Javeria Hasnain, Shandana Minhas, Yusra Amjad, and Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi. lakeermag.com/prcolumn3-2/
This year, Lakeer's Summer Mentorship Program is joined by two more incredible writers as mentors: 🌟 POETRY 🟣 FATIMA JAFAR 🌟 FICTION 🟣 HASSAAN MIRZA
Announcing our poetry cohort for the Lakeer Summer Mentorship Program! 🌟 POETRY Ayesha Owais Zainab Khalid Eesha Hammad Shahzadi Fatima Malalai Noor Khan Mentored by Fatima Jafar and Aiman Tahir Khan. Congratulations to the participants!
Announcing our cohort for Food Writing and Translation, for Lakeer Summer Mentorship Program! 🌟 FOOD WRITING Zainab Saeed 🌟 TRANSLATION Konain Fatima Congratulations to the selected participants!
We are so excited to announce our cohort for the Lakeer Summer Mentorship Program! 🌟 FICTION Abdul Kabir Sara Ilyas Eman Farhan 🌟 SPECULATIVE FICTION Jalal Tarar Saamia Haq 🌟 CREATIVE NONFICTION Anees Ur Rehman Huda Lakhani Naaseh Sajid Congratulations!
Listen to Iqra Shagufta Cheema's translation from Urdu of Zehra Nigah's poem 'Mother, I Survived'. The moving translation and reading by Iqra are included in Issue Seven of Lakeer Magazine: lakeermag.com/zehra-nigah-...
In our latest issue, Rabia Malik speaks with Tayyba Maya Kanwal about Tayyba's debut short-story collection 'Talking with Boys' (Black Lawrence Press, 2026). The stories take place in the US, the UAE, and Pakistan. Read the full interview here: lakeermag.com/tayyba-maya-...
There is movement and transformation in Ayesha Owais's poem, 'A poem where the dog comes back as a fish'. Read it in full in Issue Seven of Lakeer Magazine: lakeermag.com/ayesha-owais...
Lakeer is a nonprofit literary publication, dedicated to creative voices from Pakistan and its diaspora. We depend on donations to pay our writers, and to keep our platform alive. To support work that matters, please donate today at the link in our bio.
⭐️ The Lakeer Summer Mentorship Program 2026 offers mentorship across a range of categories. ⭐️ Applications close on 18 May. ⭐️ The program is free, and online. ⭐️ Guidelines at: lakeermag.com/mentorship
Bareerah Ghani talks to Daniyal Mueenuddin, author of the novel 'This Is Where the Serpent Lives' (Knopf, 2026). They speak about power, servitude, and the manifestations of these in the characters in the novel. Read the full interview in Issue Seven: lakeermag.com/daniyal-muee...
Sri Lankan writer, educator, and theatre practitioner – and guest editor for Chapter Two of Avaaz – Gaya Nagahawatta brings to us five poems and a short story in Tamil and Sinhala, translated into Urdu and Shahpuri by Hammad Rind, and Majhi Punjabi by Rabia Malik. lakeermag.com/avaaz-sinhal...
In her essay 'Beyond Gumnam Tareekh', Musfira Khurshid looks at archives that are texts and buildings, and pays special attention to the silences in them, showing us that there is more than one way we are always connected to the past. Read it in Issue Seven: lakeermag.com/musfira-khur...
📅 We can't wait to see everyone at Lakeer Kahaniyan Lahore! This will be an open-mic evening, with some of our contributors reading as well. ⏰ 15 Feb | 6pm 📍 The Last Word Bookstore, Lahore 9 A Main Blvd Gulberg، above Third Culture Coffee, Block K Gulberg 2, Lahore
'The Marchers Have Reached the Capital' by Sakina Hassan, in Lakeer Magazine's Spring 2024 issue. Read the full poem here: lakeermag.com/the-marchers/
📢 SUBMISSIONS CALL for Lakeer Magazine! 📢 Fiction, personal essays, and book reviews. #lakeermagazine
