Mizna

Danez Smith reading at RAWIfest in October 2023, photo by Bruce Wilcox

Mizna is a woman-led non-profit contemporary and experimental arts organization. We publish a self-titled bi-annual literary and art journal, Mizna, and Mizna Online, a digital platform for writing. We also produce the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, the largest and longest-running SWANA-centered film festival in the Midwest. Additional programs include classes, readings, performances, public art commissions, and community events that have featured 1000+ local and international writers, filmmakers, and artists for 25 years.

In 1999, Mizna embarked on a journey toward a future no one in the twenty-first century could have imagined. We were a small midwestern team of artists, educators, students, and community members ready to resist the stereotypical and one-dimensional tropes Arab and SWANA folks were, and remain, subjected to. We could not find ourselves in the stories America created about us, so we built this platform—to tell our stories on our terms. In Arabic, the word Mizna means “a rain-bearing cloud.” From the very beginning, we were committed to being your sheltering cloud, replenishing the seeds of our collective possibilities. Mizna is a movement rooted in your stories, and we are growing. 

Seventeen film festivals, forty-four literary journals, and twenty-five years later, Mizna is leading a charge towards a more expansive future for Arab and SWANA creatives. Mizna Online is our recently launched digital publishing platform. Featuring  multidisciplinary work, Mizna Online has been focusing its efforts on publishing work in solidarity with Palestine and anti-Zionism. In 2024, Mizna Online will be launched as a formal addition to our website.

We are $3,000 away from reaching our spring fundraising goal. A donation of $25 helps support our ability to pay the artists and contributors who bring our literary journal to life. A donation of $250 or more helps ensure our staff brings you critical film programming and necessary advocacy work as we collectively resist the ongoing atrocities impacting our communities in Gaza, Sudan, Artsakh, and elsewhere throughout our Arab & SWANA communities. 

Now in 2024, we mark our twenty-fifth anniversary year. Mizna remains committed to programming that adapts and actionably responds not only to our community’s needs but also to the state of the world. We strive to create space for collective gathering, communal relief, and resilience.

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