Layla Azmi Goushey on Launching Multilingual ‘Baladi’ Magazine
January 21 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
ArabLit Staff
Writer, scholar, teacher, and editor Layla Azmi Goushey recently launched a new online literary magazine. It’s called Baladi, and it’s available at baladimagazine.com. The project started at the end of 2020, she said, when she contacted Aya Ghanameh about creating a banner for the site. “I had an image of Jaffa’s harbor that I liked,” Azmi Goushey said, “and I wanted something that displayed some whimsy along with the idea of the past, present, and future. The motto I developed for Baladi is Exploring the Past, Engaging the Present, and Imagining the Future.”
The site has a focus on the speculative, and on conversations with authors, featuring talks with authors like Mohammed Said Hjiouij (Kafka in Tangier), PL Stewart (Drowned Kingdom Saga), Marguerite Dabaie (The Hookah Girl and Other True Stories), Lena Mubsutina (Amreekiya) and others, as well as poetry, art, and short fiction in English and in Arabic.
We had a back-and-forth about the magazine over email.
Can you tell us a bit about where you got the idea to launch Baladi, the discussions behind it, and how you’d describe the focus of the magazine?
Layla Azmi Goushey: I’ve played around with different ideas and possibilities for journal sites and blogs for a while. I created a blog titled “Transnational Literacies” and I posted a few personal essays and book reviews on it, but the name didn’t reflect what I felt inside. What I liked about the name “Transnational Literacies” is that it acknowledged different communication structures and literacies – kind of an awareness of flowing, dynamic, evolving forms of language, including art, but it was too academic for my purposes.
I finally had an epiphany because of a webinar I attended where a speaker kept referring to Palestine as the “blad,” or the homeland. I love the term because of all the connotations to indigenity and the right of return, but as a Palestinian American from Texas, I’ve always found requests to specify my homeland uncomfortable. I remember a time at a small dinner party when, in answer to the question of where I’m from, I replied that I am from Fort Worth, Texas. Conversation then focused on reminders that I am to also say “I am from Jerusalem” because that is where my father was born. I am very proud that Jerusalem is part of my heritage and that my grandfather owned a shop in the Old City. However, the older I get the more I want to acknowledge those memories of my Texas homeland. Complex answers to these supposedly simple questions are an angst of being in the diaspora. So, after mulling my discomfort over the term “blad” and the reasons for it, because I do want to acknowledge the loss of Palestine, and I do want to own the term and express myself as a Palestinian American, I realized that I needed to define the terms blad or baladi (my homeland) for myself.
I inherited some sympathies with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Arab nationalism due to the influence of my father and his friends – their generation. However, I’m done with nationalism now. I can see that it is a divisive and anti-indigenous concept. I’m looking for something more flexible and unifying. Maybe intercultural and postnational – whatever that means.
Regarding the Baladi Magazine concept, I now see earth as the homeland. I’m rooted in concepts of indigeniety and interculturalism.
Another apothegm that I encountered last year helped me focus my concept for Baladi. I interviewed a Lebanese American woman who has contributed much to the Texas Arab American community since the 1980s. She was born in the U.S., and spent several years in Morocco working for an NGO. After several minutes of our discussion of identity and belonging, she suddenly said “Layla. Identity is fluid.” That statement hit home for me. (No pun intended.) I think we all show different sides of ourselves at different times, and many folks, including those in diaspora, evolve in our lifelong search for identity and belonging.
You have pieces published in English and published bilingually in Arabic and English. Are you open to more languages? What made you want to publish bilingually?
LAG: Yes. Baladi Magazine is multilingual, and I will publish both the English version and the original language of any submission. This is reflective of my desire to recognize indigenous authenticity and artistic authenticity of the writer or artist (if it is an artist’s interview, for example). I want to remind people of the origin of a work and that the English version is a mediated form of the original.
You have some beautiful stand-alone narrative art submissions — Aya’s sailboat, Nour Moussa’s “Tribute” to Nabil Farouk and Ahmed Khaled Tawfik — as well as art that goes along with literary works, like Lisa Suhair Majaj’s artwork that goes with her poem. What made you want to focus on art, and what sorts of art are you looking for?
LAG: I love all kinds of art and I use art as prompts for writing.
However, many pieces of visual art convey stories and poems of their own. I edit a student art and literary journal at my college, and the English and art department collaborate on the project. I have always done this in my workplace and it just seemed a natural concept to carry over into my personal projects.
The magazine has a strong audio-video element — a recording of Lisa Suhair Majaj’s “Voices” poem and the several video discussions. What made you want to focus on the video?
LAG: I was influenced by an indie writers’ and booktubers’ group I’m involved with. They will set up reading schedules of mostly indie-authored science-fiction, fantasy, and horror books, but they will occasionally include a well-known traditionally-published book. A few of us will read the book and then come together and discuss it on a Youtube live stream or live podcast with each other and in conversation with folks who post questions in the chat. I like the idea of a relaxed conversation versus a formal interview structure. It just seemed natural to do the same type of discussion on Baladi. So I tell the folks I invite that it is meant to be a casual conversation. I do a lot of preparation for a conversation, but once we begin I want the mood to be friendly and responsive. If we need to pause and Google something obscure that is brought up during the discussion, that’s fine. It’s all good.
My work with the indie sci-fi and fantasy writers (with SWANA and Western perspectives) is also why you may see some work by them on Baladi. There are some unhelpful publishing and reading silos I hope to work around. For example, if the author’s work reflects a respect for indigenous populations, or in some way is bringing something new about interculturalism to the work, I would consider it for Baladi regardless of the author’s perceived identity.
How often/frequently do you expect to publish? And what kinds of submissions are you looking for?
LAG: My goal is to do something every Saturday for now. That might be a YouTube conversation with someone, or it might be that I publish a submission of a short story or poem. I’ve also considered publishing a couple of my own reflective prose pieces.
Submissions I would like to see are poems, short stories, and art that are futuristic and experimental but based in indigenous themes. I also like pieces that reflect an aspect of Baladi’s motto of exploring, the past, engaging the present, and imagining the future. For example, a reflection that puts new light on a historical event is always of interest. Most of all, while I’m open to publishing work rooted in all belief systems, I’m especially interested in explorations of the secular Arab experience or the secular Arab Western experience. As a secular humanist, I want to provide a place for this topic, because I rarely find folks in my everyday life who share my secular beliefs.
ArabLit Staff
Writer, scholar, teacher, and editor Layla Azmi Goushey recently launched a new online literary magazine. It’s called Baladi, and it’s available at baladimagazine.com. The project started at the end of 2020, she said, when she contacted Aya Ghanameh about creating a banner for the site. “I had an image of Jaffa’s harbor that I liked,” Azmi Goushey said, “and I wanted something that displayed some whimsy along with the idea of the past, present, and future. The motto I developed for Baladi is Exploring the Past, Engaging the Present, and Imagining the Future.”
The site has a focus on the speculative, and on conversations with authors, featuring talks with authors like Mohammed Said Hjiouij (Kafka in Tangier), PL Stewart (Drowned Kingdom Saga), Marguerite Dabaie (The Hookah Girl and Other True Stories), Lena Mubsutina (Amreekiya) and others, as well as poetry, art, and short fiction in English and in Arabic.
We had a back-and-forth about the magazine over email.
Can you tell us a bit about where you got the idea to launch Baladi, the discussions behind it, and how you’d describe the focus of the magazine?
Layla Azmi Goushey: I’ve played around with different ideas and possibilities for journal sites and blogs for a while. I created a blog titled “Transnational Literacies” and I posted a few personal essays and book reviews on it, but the name didn’t reflect what I felt inside. What I liked about the name “Transnational Literacies” is that it acknowledged different communication structures and literacies – kind of an awareness of flowing, dynamic, evolving forms of language, including art, but it was too academic for my purposes.
I finally had an epiphany because of a webinar I attended where a speaker kept referring to Palestine as the “blad,” or the homeland. I love the term because of all the connotations to indigenity and the right of return, but as a Palestinian American from Texas, I’ve always found requests to specify my homeland uncomfortable. I remember a time at a small dinner party when, in answer to the question of where I’m from, I replied that I am from Fort Worth, Texas. Conversation then focused on reminders that I am to also say “I am from Jerusalem” because that is where my father was born. I am very proud that Jerusalem is part of my heritage and that my grandfather owned a shop in the Old City. However, the older I get the more I want to acknowledge those memories of my Texas homeland. Complex answers to these supposedly simple questions are an angst of being in the diaspora. So, after mulling my discomfort over the term “blad” and the reasons for it, because I do want to acknowledge the loss of Palestine, and I do want to own the term and express myself as a Palestinian American, I realized that I needed to define the terms blad or baladi (my homeland) for myself.
I inherited some sympathies with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Arab nationalism due to the influence of my father and his friends – their generation. However, I’m done with nationalism now. I can see that it is a divisive and anti-indigenous concept. I’m looking for something more flexible and unifying. Maybe intercultural and postnational – whatever that means.
Regarding the Baladi Magazine concept, I now see earth as the homeland. I’m rooted in concepts of indigeniety and interculturalism.
Another apothegm that I encountered last year helped me focus my concept for Baladi. I interviewed a Lebanese American woman who has contributed much to the Texas Arab American community since the 1980s. She was born in the U.S., and spent several years in Morocco working for an NGO. After several minutes of our discussion of identity and belonging, she suddenly said “Layla. Identity is fluid.” That statement hit home for me. (No pun intended.) I think we all show different sides of ourselves at different times, and many folks, including those in diaspora, evolve in our lifelong search for identity and belonging.
You have pieces published in English and published bilingually in Arabic and English. Are you open to more languages? What made you want to publish bilingually?
LAG: Yes. Baladi Magazine is multilingual, and I will publish both the English version and the original language of any submission. This is reflective of my desire to recognize indigenous authenticity and artistic authenticity of the writer or artist (if it is an artist’s interview, for example). I want to remind people of the origin of a work and that the English version is a mediated form of the original.
You have some beautiful stand-alone narrative art submissions — Aya’s sailboat, Nour Moussa’s “Tribute” to Nabil Farouk and Ahmed Khaled Tawfik — as well as art that goes along with literary works, like Lisa Suhair Majaj’s artwork that goes with her poem. What made you want to focus on art, and what sorts of art are you looking for?
LAG: I love all kinds of art and I use art as prompts for writing.
However, many pieces of visual art convey stories and poems of their own. I edit a student art and literary journal at my college, and the English and art department collaborate on the project. I have always done this in my workplace and it just seemed a natural concept to carry over into my personal projects.
The magazine has a strong audio-video element — a recording of Lisa Suhair Majaj’s “Voices” poem and the several video discussions. What made you want to focus on the video?
LAG: I was influenced by an indie writers’ and booktubers’ group I’m involved with. They will set up reading schedules of mostly indie-authored science-fiction, fantasy, and horror books, but they will occasionally include a well-known traditionally-published book. A few of us will read the book and then come together and discuss it on a Youtube live stream or live podcast with each other and in conversation with folks who post questions in the chat. I like the idea of a relaxed conversation versus a formal interview structure. It just seemed natural to do the same type of discussion on Baladi. So I tell the folks I invite that it is meant to be a casual conversation. I do a lot of preparation for a conversation, but once we begin I want the mood to be friendly and responsive. If we need to pause and Google something obscure that is brought up during the discussion, that’s fine. It’s all good.
My work with the indie sci-fi and fantasy writers (with SWANA and Western perspectives) is also why you may see some work by them on Baladi. There are some unhelpful publishing and reading silos I hope to work around. For example, if the author’s work reflects a respect for indigenous populations, or in some way is bringing something new about interculturalism to the work, I would consider it for Baladi regardless of the author’s perceived identity.
How often/frequently do you expect to publish? And what kinds of submissions are you looking for?
LAG: My goal is to do something every Saturday for now. That might be a YouTube conversation with someone, or it might be that I publish a submission of a short story or poem. I’ve also considered publishing a couple of my own reflective prose pieces.
Submissions I would like to see are poems, short stories, and art that are futuristic and experimental but based in indigenous themes. I also like pieces that reflect an aspect of Baladi’s motto of exploring, the past, engaging the present, and imagining the future. For example, a reflection that puts new light on a historical event is always of interest. Most of all, while I’m open to publishing work rooted in all belief systems, I’m especially interested in explorations of the secular Arab experience or the secular Arab Western experience. As a secular humanist, I want to provide a place for this topic, because I rarely find folks in my everyday life who share my secular beliefs.
You can follow Baladi on Twitter at @BaladiMagazine and on YouTube at youtube.com/@BaladiMagazine.
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