Puja Journal

The lover, the priest, the owner, the lung. Our first creative writing workshop in Athens, Letters from the Dead, was a blast, amazing characters, death, desire, anger, dispair, remembrance, tenderness, monsters and world building. Loud shout out for the participating writers, wish we could do this daily

CREATIVE WRITING WOKSHOP! 16-17th May at @workinprogressstudios (Athens) held by puja editors @cinderella_exit and @eloisefornieles participation is free max 10 participants send us an email to apply at [email protected] before 5th May more info in our web 🫶 In line with our upcoming issue’s theme, we hold e two-day workshop centers on grief and the afterlife. We will focus specifically on remembrance, memory, and the dynamic between the city’s past and present.  In ancient cities, the resources and attention invested in preserving and highlighting the remnants of the past as the city’s core identity, leaves the living overshadowed by „the numberless monuments of the past, which have been hauled out and laboriously restored, and from which a tiny present draws nourishment, and because of the dreadful over-estimation of these deformed and ruined objects”. In over a hundred years, since Rilke wrote his letter from Rome, the situation has just gotten worse. But it’s not only we, citizens and visitors, and generally the living, who are forced to live in the shadow of a conglomerate of the past. The spirits behind these “chance remains of another epoch and life which is not, and should not be, ours” have also become voiceless. We will address how this epoch and life could indeed be ours by creating letters from the perspective of the city’s dead. Participants will engage in writing exercises focusing on the impersonification of remains – sculptures, ruins, museum artifacts, tombstones, entire buildings or walls – with the final result of a letter written by the dead to the living.

Thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts, sentiments, visions with us. We will start digging in and get back to everyone with the results in a couple of weeks. Excited. Hard to feel so lately in this hell of a world, so thank you again for this. <3

Submissions open until 31st March! Send complete written or visual pieces and abstracts to [email protected] All info and full call in bio Albeit daily political madness and tech psychedelia, ongoing wars, wildfires, floods, seven hours screentime, and looping, memefied despair, we seem to have few spaces left to mourn. Loss is all around, but within the infinite spin of productive individualism, grieving is almost an insult. It must remain hidden and dealt with behind closed doors. And quickly. But it’s a tricky game, since, as we all know, the dead have a habit of returning if we don’t take our time saying a proper farewell.  With the second issue of Puja Journal – On Grief & Mourning – we aim to rescue grieving from its voiceless coffin, and create space for it to be named, and worked through, so that we can shed light on the transformative agencies hidden within mourning. What and how are we grieving? What about anger, shame, and disconnection? Can despair alchemise us into something new?

SUBMISSIONS OPEN UNTIL 31ST MARCH With the second issue of Puja Journal – On Grief & Mourning – we aim to rescue grieving from its voiceless coffin, and create space for it to be named, and worked through, so that we can shed light on the transformative agencies hidden within mourning. Submit essays, short prose, poems, funeral letters, diary entries, illustrations, drawings, photos, and sketches before March 31st, 2026. 00:00 EEST (Eastern European Time) at [email protected] Read the entire call in our beautiful new website built by @711f Link in the bio

many belated new years wishes! may you all be able to use your swords to cut your way through the noise and the evil.

Sharing some snippets from our first issue which is well, sold out now. It may seem a bit silent here but we've been in fact working on a bunch of things with @eloisefornieles and @tulipankocso , two new members of the journal's small and cherished editorial team. Sweet things ahead, I just can't really tell about them yet, for markering reasons. But you know I gotta post otherwise you won't see them when the time comes. How you all do all this so well? For me, it gets me real confused. Anyway I'll try best to post about them when the time comes.

Puja is on the lookout for co-editors If taking part in the making of a self-run magazine is something you find fascinating, tell us about: Who are you? Your experience with text and editorial work What do you expect from this? and send it to our dm or to [email protected]. And needless to say, ask anything you want. What does this entail? Puja is a self-organized magazine with no financial support currently. Cultural capital, inspiration, and creative involvement are about all we can provide to editors and writers. Since we do want face to face contact, priority will be given to those based in Athens -- however, don’t hesitate if you live or are from elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, or the Mediterranean. What is this magazine all about? Puja is a journal dedicated to stories in and between Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean – both peripheric, both wild and dreamy, filled with tenderness, mystery, and struggle. And yet, all too often, they are both simplified to imaginations formed by the Western gaze, news on economic hardship, intensifying touristification, the Balkans meme economy, and crazy politicians. Imaginations that ultimately construct a sense of doubled otherness, fragmentation, and lost meaning between our experience, between you and me. Puja attempts to escape this through stories written by us about us. It is driven by themes that define our contemporary existence in their utmost banality—to understand and connect contemporary and past customs, preconceptions and superstitions, everyday life, and utopias stemming from human existence in our peripheral, othered but all-so-enchanting homes. Looking forward to it 🩵

HNY dear followers. We've been lost in holidays, life and the algorythm, but there's a new theme and open call coming up real soon. You all have 3 guesses. Thank you for supporting our baby publishing gig through her first year of existence. 💌 Let's see what this new one brings - I wish it to br a more communal, less lenghty and more lighthearted editorial process with equally exciting writing and art. Ok I kinda know what it's gonna bring oops. ps. copies are available of our first edition on Feeding, grab it in Athens for 15!

Some copies are still available of this little book. You'll find 3 chapters and 18 texts on the lust for food, (in)digestion, broken traditions and grass root communities around food culture in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, accompanied by 20 visual pieces. 15€ + shipping within EU or grab it in Athens or go for a hunt in the Slovenian bushes. I love this book and hope you do/will too. Sorry for not posting so much :( photos by the allmighty @agnes_varnai & @petit.sebastian

Who wouldn't love the Kansas twins? I sure do. Just as much as I love you all who reached out and took interest in this small book so far. You can still purchase your copy and get closer to the twins for 15€ ( shipping within the EU + 9€ )

They are all ready ❤️ 3 chapters and 18 summer readings for all the gourmet, the greedy, the sick hearted, and the bored ones. Limited 50 copies! 15€ Ed.: Ráhel Anna Molnár ( @cinderella_exit ) Typesetting: Máté Lakos ( @po__.__oq ) Texts and images brought to you by: @savazolog @apureapparatus @agnes_varnai @petit.sebastian @m.iliv @okie_dokie_oki @faeioudaeiou @isityoutiiu @angelique.ford @tomipall @csilla.b.art.us @zeeynepyilmaz @estergasparova @peteraronizsak @b_a_r_b_a_r_b @filip_bojovic @_barbart_ @gyoriblan @viktoriamonhor @__vaslikiki @ayayaykok Thank you @typografio_pletsas_kardari for the beautiful work! 🩵