Call for Contributions

Desire (3), Immaculata Abba, 2018.

Restful is a magazine of reflections on how ideas, conversations, art, literature, food and music sustain us and connect us more deeply to what matters to us. Restful is here with you in this frantic world, critically aware of the weight of the world on your shoulders and its scratch on the nape of your neck. Restful sees and appraises the fear and pain that move [with] us and chooses instead to be a space for you to rest your head.

With Restful, I am making an argument in two parts: that though the horrors and sorrows persist, respite and healing are not merely for the future but the eternal now; and that art (by which I mean whatever we create to reflect and reimagine ourselves/our world) is a worthwhile way to find this respite and healing. If we live in Connection long enough, it becomes our reality or at least, a mainstay in it.

At this stage of the magazine, Restful is looking for admittedly subjective reflections: visions of the world through an ‘I’. We currently have two paid columns: ‘Notes on Living’ and ‘Art Heals, Art Sustains’.

For ‘Notes on Living’, we need essays about moments or relationships in your life you feel strongly about. Usually, these essays are about how we make sense of a challenge, a tragedy or a loss. Instead of teaching the reader, an ideal essay in this column makes witnesses out of its readers. It takes us to a time and place where the essay’s subject was as real and concrete as the writer ever felt it. Instead of a thesis on joy, take us to a place or time where you experienced or witnessed joy in a way that crossed your wonder line.

For ‘Art Heals, Art Sustains’, we need essays that take us through the conversations, books, music, films, events, etc that shaped how the writer came to understand a subject, acquire a conviction, or shape their belief/thinking about a thing. An ideal essay in this column discusses four to seven works/scenes. Another way to think of an ideal essay here is to think of an earnest letter you would write to a very good long-distance friend about the things you’ve been watching, reading, eating etc that are changing your life. That sense that this thing you’re writing is pressing on your heart is a vital component we look for.

You do not need to consider yourself a writer to contribute to Restful but we look out for a sense of conviction and an attentive disposition to the essay’s subject(s). And if writing about the thing excites you more than the thing itself, this is probably not a call for you. If this resonates with you, please consider contributing a piece of (your) reflection to our well of inspiration on how we are finding meaning, healing and rest in our lives, as individuals and communities. If you remember one thing, let it be this: Tell us only what you must.

💡

We are also working on a print issue and are open to pitches on the theme ‘Lay Your Head’, as in whatever it is that brings one to the kind of heaviness that demands to be laid down… and the laying down on another’s shoulders, on Lloyd’s pillow, on another’s lap, on the rock of ages, to sleep, death, etc. so thinking: ideas, worries, pain, beliefs, faith, sex, grief, trauma, respite…

Timelines:

For online contributions, no deadline.

For print: for final submissions June 28 (so get your pitches in good time before then)

Honorarium:

750 - 1500 words for the online magazine (25k Naira)

Honorariums for final print submissions will be upward of the Naira equivalent of $100.

Email your submissions to hello@studiostyles.org and please expect slow replies.

- Immaculata