A home for migrants in The Other Side of Hope
Lina Fadel is one of the poetry editors at The Other Side of Hope, a magazine that centres around journeys in refugee and immigrant literature. It’s based here in the UK, and as you’ll hear in the podcast episode above, it’s partly a literary magazine and partly a community project, because it’s all about bringing people together and providing a platform for voices that wouldn’t otherwise be heard.
Lots of magazines can claim to do that in their own way, but The Other Side of Hope is different, because its fiction and poetry sections are only open to migrants, while the non-fiction, review and interview sections are all migration-themed and open to everyone. I really enjoyed speaking with Lina about that structure and what it brings to the project, and also the special, intimate understanding the editors have for their writers, who are often people who have experienced war and exile, and may have English as a second or third language.
The Other Side of Hope is quite an unusual magazine for us to cover because from a design point of view it’s really quite a straight-up, text-based literary journal, whereas we normally cover publications that are trying for something a bit more adventurous. But it’s also quite an extraordinary project, built on love and inclusivity, so I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation with Lina Fadel.
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