Mahogany Journal

For +65 South Asians

About

Mahogany Journal was conceptualised in 2020 as a welcoming online literary space for anglophone South Asian writers and readers in Singapore. Our main objective is to share stories that are written by, about and for people like us. This non-profit journal strives to examine the South Asian diaspora through an intersectional lens. Together with your input, we, Prasanthi Ram (fiction editor) and Jaryl George Solomon (poetry editor), hope to unpack what it truly means to be South Asian in our local and global context.

Issues

Contact

Our Mahogany Family

Here at Mahogany, we are always thrilled to hear that our contributors have been republished. It lets us know that our work matters within and beyond our +65 South Asian literary community. Thank you for believing in us, and more so, yourselves.

When We Inherit: Growing Up Indian (2022)
Issue 1, Poetry | “Being Brown” - Sanusha S SritharanBest New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Five (2021)
Issue 1, Fiction | “Sacred Scalp” - Anittha Thanabalan
Issue 1, Fiction | “The Prayer Mat” - Wisha JamalHow We Live: Stories of Daily Living (2022)
Issue 2, Fiction | “The House of Wind” - Anittha Thanabalan

New Year New Stories 2025 Workshop Series
Fully sold out18 January Introduction to Fiction (Prasanthi Ram)
1 February Mastering Fiction (Nisha Mehraj)
15 February Introduction to Poetry (Jaryl George Solomon)
1 March Mastering Poetry (Pooja Nansi)
15 March Introduction to Creative Nonfiction (Prasanthi and Jaryl)
29 March Mastering Creative Nonfiction (Varsha Sivaram)

OPEN CALL
(1 June - 13 July 2025)

Manifest Zine

Since our inception in 2020, many contributors and readers alike have asked if Mahogany Journal would ever put out a physical publication. Through our Jalan Besar fellowship with Sing Lit Station earlier this year, we are pleased to announce that we are finally manifesting our first ever zine! Hurrah!More excitingly, we will be teaming up with longtime contributor and Issue 2 cover artist Anusha.Together, we are hoping to create an alt mag that harks back to the irreverence of magazines we pored over in the nineties and noughties like Singapore’s Lime and Teenage or America’s Cosmogirl and Seventeen.

Titled Manifest, the zine will primarily spotlight poetry, microfiction and micro nonfiction inspired by mainstay features of the magazines of our growing up years, while maintaining our signature +65 South Asian Mahogany lens!Think beauty and fashion tips, hot picks, wishlists, monthly astrology, personality quizzes, advice columns, and confessions pages. You can explore reviews of films and books or interviews with fictional or real people. Perhaps, you might even want to create your own advertorial. Get creative!What we hope for you to manifest:

  • Dreams & desires

  • Ghosts & apparitions

  • Fate & will

  • Healing & power

  • Psychics & metaphysics

  • Talismans & lucky charms

Poems (up to 3): A5, single page, single line spacingMicrofiction or micro nonfiction (up to 2): 300 to 500 words, single line spacingDiverse submission (up to 3): If you wish to submit across genres, please note you can submit a maximum of 1 piece per genre.Each contributor will be paid S$40 per approved work.When submitting your work on Google Form, please include your writer's bio as well as photo & upload 1-3 images that you’ve personally taken that you believe are connected to your work. For example, if your work centers around Hot Picks for a Fresh Face, you might consider taking pictures of your beauty drawer or cosmetics you use on the daily. We hope to utilise these images in our overall aesthetic for the alt mag that will be collage-centric.Not sure about your idea? Feel free to approach us via Instagram (@mahoganyjournal) or contact us via our contact form to check if your idea for the open call would be acceptable.